FRANCE 
AT  WAR 


RUDYARD  KIPLING 


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FRANCE  AT  WAR 

ON  THE  FRONTIER  OF  CIVILIZATION 


(FRANCE    AT 
WAR 

On  the  Frontier  of  Civilization 


BY 

RUDYARD  KIPLING 


Garden  City  New  York 

DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 

1915 


IvN^ 


Copyright,  1915,  by 
RuDYARD  Kipling 

All  rights  reserved,  including  that  of 

translation  into  foreign  languages, 

including  the  Scandinavian 


CONTENTS 

Poem:  France 

PAGE 

3 

I.  On  the  Frontier  of  Civili- 
zation       

9 

II.  The  Nation's  Spirit  and  a 
New  Inheritance 

31 

III.  Battle    Spectacle    and    a 
Review 

50 

IV.  The  Spirit  of  the  People  . 

72 

V.  Life  in  Trenches  on  the 
Mountain  Side  .      .      . 

91 

VI.  The  Common  Task  of  a 
Great  People      .     .     . 

111 

FRANCE  AT  WAR 

ON  THE  FRONTIER  OF  CIVILIZATION 


FRANCE* 

BY   RUDYAED   KIPLING 

Broke  to  every  known  mischance,  lifted  over 

all 
By  the  light  sane  joy  of  life,  the  buckler  of 

the  Gaul, 
Furious  in  luxury,  merciless  in  toil. 
Terrible  with  strength  that  draws  from  her 

tireless  soil. 
Strictest  judge  of  her  own  worth,  gentlest  of 

men's  mind, 
First  to  follotv  truth  and  last  to  leave  old 

truths  behind — 
France  beloved  of  every  soul  that  loves  its 

fellow-kind. 


*First  published  June  24,  1913.     Copyright,  1913, 
by  Rudyard  Kipling. 

3 


4  FRANCE 

Ere  our  birth  (reraemberest  thou?)  side 

by  side  we  lay 
Fretting  in  the  womb  of  Rome  to  begin 

the  fray. 
Ere  men  knew  our  tongues  apart,  our  one 

taste  was  known — 
Each  must  mould  the  other's  fate  as  he 

wrought  his  own. 
To  this  end  we  stirred  mankind  till  all 

earth  was  ours, 
Till  our  world-end  strifes  began  wayside 

thrones  and  powers, 
Puppets  that  we  made  or  broke  to  bar 

the  other's  path — 
Necessary,  outpost  folk,  hirelings  of  our 

wrath. 
To  this  end  we  stormed  the  seas,  tack  for 

tack,  and  burst 
Through   the   doorways   of  new   worlds, 

doubtful  which  was  first. 
Hand  on  hilt  (rememberest  thou?),  ready 

for  the  blow. 


FRANCE  o 

Sure  whatever  else  we   met  we  should 

meet  our  foe. 
Spurred  or  baulked  at  ev'ry  stride  by  the 

other's  strength, 
So  we  rode  the  ages  down  and  every  ocean's 

length; 
Where  did  you  refrain  from  us  or  we  re- 
frain from  you? 
Ask  the  wave  that  has  not  watched  war 

between  us  two. 
Others   held   us   for   a   while,   but   with 

weaker  charms. 
These  we  quitted  at  the  call  for  each 

other's  arms. 
Eager  toward  the  known  delight,  equally 

we  strove. 
Each  the  other's  mystery,  terror,  need, 

and  love. 
To   each   other's    open    court   with    our 

proofs  we  came. 
Where  could  we  find  honoiu*  else  or  men 

to  test  the  claim? 


6  FKANCE 

From  each  other's  throat  we  wrenched 

valour's  last  reward, 
That    extorted    word    of    praise    gasped 

'twixt  lunge  and  guard. 
In  each  other's  cup  we  poured  mingled 

blood  and  tears, 
Brutal  joys,  unmeasured  hopes,  intoler- 
able fears. 
All  that  soiled  or  salted  life  for  a  thousand 

years. 
Proved  beyond  the  need  of  proof,  matched 

in  every  clime, 
O    companion,    we    have    lived    greatly 

through  all  time: 
Yoked  in  knowledge  and  remorse  now  we 

come  to  rest. 
Laughing  at  old  villainies  that  time  has 

turned  to  jest. 
Pardoning  old  necessity  no  pardon  can 

efface — 
That  undying  sin  we  shared  in  Rouen 

market-place. 


FRANCE  7 

Now  we  watch  the  new  years  shape,  won- 
dering if  they  hold 
Fiercer  hghting  in  their  hearts  than  we 

launched  of  old. 
Now  we  hear  new  voices  rise,  question, 

boast  or  gird, 
As  we  raged  (rememberest  thou?)  when 

our  crowds  were  stirred. 
Now  we  count  new  keels  afloat,  and  new 

hosts  on  land. 
Massed  liked  ours  (rememberest  thou?) 

when  our  strokes  were  planned. 
We  were  schooled  for  dear  life  sake,  to 

know  each  other's  blade: 
What  can  blood  and  iron  make  more  than 

we  have  made? 
We  have  learned  by  keenest  use  to  know 

each  other's  mind: 
What  shall  blood  and  iron  loose  that  we 

cannot  bind? 
We  who  swept  each  other's  coast,  sacked 

each  other's  home. 


8  FRANCE 

Since  the  sword  of  Brennus  clashed  on 

the  scales  at  Rome, 
Listen,  court  and  close  again,  wheeling 

girth  to  girth, 
In  the  strained  and  bloodless  guard  set 

for  peace  on  earth. 

Broke  to  every  known  mischance,  lifted  over 
all 

By  the  light  sane  joy  of  life,  the  buckler  of 
the  Gaul, 

Furious  in  luxury,  merciless  in  toil. 

Terrible  vnth  strength  renewed  from  a  tire- 
less soil. 

Strictest  judge  of  her  own  worth,  gentlest  of 
Tnens  mind. 

First  to  face  the  truth  and  last  to  leave  old 
truths  behind, 

France  beloved  of  every  soul  that  loves  or 
serves  its  kind. 


ON  THE  FRONTIER  OF 
CIVILIZATION 

"It's  a  pretty  park,"  said  the  French 
artillery  officer.  "We've  done  a  lot 
for  it  since  the  owner  left.  I  hope 
he'll  appreciate  it  when  he  comes 
back." 

The  car  traversed  a  winding  drive 
through  woods,  between  banks  em- 
bellished with  little  chalets  of  a  rustic 
nature.  At  first,  the  chalets  stood 
their  full  height  above  ground,  sug- 
gesting tea-gardens  in  England.  Fur- 
ther on  they  sank  into  the  earth  till, 
at  the  top  of  the  ascent,  only  their 
9 


10  FRANCE   AT   WAR 

solid  brown  roofs  showed.  Torn 
branches  drooping  across  the  drive- 
way, with  here  and  there  a  scorched 
patch  of  undergrowth,  explained  the 
reason  of  their  modesty. 

The  chateau  that  commanded  these 
glories  of  forest  and  park  sat  boldly  on 
a  terrace.  There  was  nothing  wrong 
with  it  except,  if  one  looked  closely,  a 
few  scratches  or  dints  on  its  white 
stone  walls,  or  a  neatly  drilled  hole 
under  a  flight  of  steps.  One  such 
hole  ended  in  an  unexploded  shell. 
"Yes,"  said  the  officer.  "They  ar- 
rive here  occasionally." 

Something  bellowed  across  the  folds 
of  the  wooded  hills;  something  grunted 
in  reply.  Something  passed  overhead, 
querulously  but  not  without  dignity. 
Two    clear    fresh    barks    joined    the 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  11 

chorus,  and  a  man  moved  lazily  in  the 
direction  of  the  guns. 

"Well.  Suppose  we  come  and  look 
at  things  a  little,"  said  the  command- 
ing oflBcer. 

AN   OBSERVATION   POST 

There  was  a  specimen  tree — a  tree 
worthy  of  such  a  park — the  sort  of 
tree  visitors  are  always  taken  to  ad- 
mire. A  ladder  ran  up  it  to  a  plat- 
form. What  little  wind  there  was 
swayed  the  tall  top,  and  the  ladder 
creaked  like  a  ship's  gangway.  A 
telephone  bell  tinkled  50  foot  over- 
head. Two  invisible  guns  spoke  fer- 
vently for  half  a  minute,  and  broke  off 
like  terriers  choked  on  a  leash.  We 
climbed  till  the  topmost  platform 
swayed  sicklily  beneath  us.    Here  one 


12  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

found  a  rustic  shelter,  always  of  the 
tea-garden  pattern,  a  table,  a  map, 
and  a  little  window  wreathed  with 
living  branches  that  gave  one  the 
first  view  of  the  Devil  and  all  his 
works.  It  was  a  stretch  of  open 
country,  with  a  few  sticks  like  old 
tooth-brushes  which  had  once  been 
trees  round  a  farm.  The  rest  was 
yellow  grass,  barren  to  all  appearance 
as  the  veldt. 

"The  grass  is  yellow  because  they 
have  used  gas  here,"  said  an  oflficer. 

"Their  trenches  are .      You  can 

see  for  yourself." 

The  guns  in  the  woods  began  again. 
They  seemed  to  have  no  relation  to 
the  regularly  spaced  bursts  of  smoke 
along  a  little  smear  in  the  desert  earth 
two  thousand  yards  away — no  con- 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  13 

nection  at  all  with  the  strong  voices 
overhead  coming  and  going.  It  was 
as  impersonal  as  the  drive  of  the  sea 
along  a  breakwater. 

Thus  it  went:  a  pause — a  gather- 
ing of  sound  like  the  race  of  an  incom- 
ing wave;  then  the  high-flung  heads 
of  breakers  spouting  white  up  the  face 
of  a  groyne.  Suddenly,  a  seventh 
wave  broke  and  spread  the  shape  of 
its  foam  like  a  plume  overtopping  all 
the  others. 

"That's  one  of  our  torpilleurs — 
what  you  call  trench-sweepers,"  said 
the  observer  among  the  whispering 
leaves. 

Some  one  crossed  the  platform  to 
consult  the  map  with  its  ranges.  A 
blistering  outbreak  of  white  smokes 
rose  a  little  beyond  the  large  plume. 


14  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

It  was  as  though  the  tide  had  struck 
a  reef  out  yonder. 

Then  a  new  voice  of  tremendous 
volume  lifted  itself  out  of  a  lull  that 
followed.  Somebody  laughed.  Evi- 
dently the  voice  was  known. 

"That  is  not  for  us,"  a  gunner  said. 

"  They  are  being  waked  up  from " 

he  named  a  distant  French  position. 
"So  and  so  is  attending  to  them  there. 
We  go  on  with  our  usual  work.  Look ! 
Another  torpilleur." 

"the  barbarian" 

Again  a  big  plume  rose;  and  again 
the  lighter  shells  broke  at  their  ap- 
pointed distance  beyond  it.  The 
smoke  died  away  on  that  stretch  of 
trench,  as  the  foam  of  a  swell  dies 
in  the  angle  of  a  harbour  wall,  and 


FRANCE   AT    WAR  15 

broke  out  afresh  half  a  mile  lower 
down.  In  its  apparent  laziness,  in  its 
awful  deliberation,  and  its  quick 
spasms  of  wrath,  it  was  more  like  the 
work  of  waves  than  of  men;  and  our 
high  platform's  gentle  sway  and  glide 
was  exactly  the  motion  of  a  ship  drift- 
ing with  us  toward  that  shore. 

"The  usual  work.  Only  the  usual 
work,"  the  officer  explained.  "Some- 
times it  is  here.  Sometimes  above  or 
below  us.  I  have  been  here  since 
May." 

A  httle  sunshine  flooded  the  stricken 
landscape  and  made  its  chemical  yel- 
low look  more  foul.  A  detachment 
of  men  moved  out  on  a  road  which  ran 
toward  the  French  trenches,  and 
then  vanished  at  the  foot  of  a  little 
rise.     Other    men    appeared    moving 


16  FRANCE   AT    WAR 

toward  us  with  that  concentration 
of  purpose  and  bearing  shown  in 
both  Armies  when — dinner  is  at  hand. 
They  looked  Hke  people  who  had  been 
digging  hard. 

"The  same  work.  Always  the 
same  work!"  the  oflScer  said.  "And 
you  could  walk  from  here  to  the  sea 
or  to  Switzerland  in  that  ditch — and 
you'll  find  the  same  work  going  on 
everywhere.     It  isn't  war." 

"It's  better  than  that,"  said  an- 
other. "  It's  the  eating-up  of  a  people. 
They  come  and  they  fill  the  trenches 
and  they  die,  and  they  die;  and  they 
send  more  and  those  die.  We  do  the 
same,  of  course,  but — look!" 

He  pointed  to  the  large  deliberate 
smoke-heads  renewing  themselves 
along  that  yellowed  beach.      "That  is 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  17 

the  frontier  of  civilization.  They 
have  all  civilization  against  them — 
those  brutes  yonder.  It's  not  the 
local  victories  of  the  old  wars  that 
we're  after.  It's  the  barbarian — all 
the  barbarian.  Now,  you've  seen 
the  whole  thing  in  little.  Come  and 
look  at  our  children." 

SOLDIERS   IN    CAVES 

We  left  that  tall  tree  whose  fruits 
are  death  ripened  and  distributed  at 
the  tingle  of  small  bells.  The  ob- 
server returned  to  his  maps  and  calcu- 
lations; the  telephone-boy  stiffened 
up  beside  his  exchange  as  the  ama- 
teurs went  out  of  his  life.  Some  one 
called  down  through  the  branches  to 
ask  who  was  attending  to — Belial, 
let  us  say,  for  I  could  not  catch  the 


18  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

gun's  name.  It  seemed  to  belong  to 
that  terrific  new  voice  which  had 
lifted  itself  for  the  second  or  third 
time.  It  appeared  from  the  reply 
that  if  Belial  talked  too  long  he  would 
be  dealt  with  from  another  point 
miles  away. 

The  troops  we  came  down  to  see 
were  at  rest  in  a  chain  of  caves  which 
had  begun  life  as  quarries  and  had 
been  fitted  up  by  the  army  for  its  own 
uses.  There  were  underground  cor- 
ridors, ante-chambers,  rotundas,  and 
ventilating  shafts  with  a  bewildering 
play  of  cross  lights,  so  that  wherever 
you  looked  you  saw  Goya's  pictures 
of  men-at-arms. 

Every  soldier  has  some  of  the  old 
maid  in  him,  and  rejoices  in  all  the 
gadgets  and  devices  of  his  own  in- 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  19 

vention.  Death  and  wounding  come 
by  nature,  but  to  lie  dry,  sleep  soft, 
and  keep  yourself  clean  by  fore- 
thought and  contrivance  is  art,  and 
in  all  things  the  Frenchman  is  glo- 
riously an  artist. 

Moreover,  the  French  officers 
seem  as  mother-keen  on  their  men 
as  their  men  are  brother-fond  of 
them.  Maybe  the  possessive  form 
of  address:  "Mon  general,"  "mon 
capitaine,"  helps  the  idea,  which  our 
men  cloke  in  other  and  curter  phrases. 
And  those  soldiers,  like  ours,  had 
been  welded  for  months  in  one  fur- 
nace. As  an  oflScer  said:  "Half  our 
orders  now  need  not  be  given.  Ex- 
perience makes  us  think  together." 
I  believe,  too,  that  if  a  French  private 
has   an   idea — and   they   are   full   of 


20  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

ideas — it  reaches  his   C.   O.   quicker 
than  it  does  with  us. 

THE   SENTINEL   HOUNDS 

The  overwhelming  impression  was 
the  brilHant  health  and  vitality  of 
these  men  and  the  quality  of  their 
breeding.  They  bore  themselves 
with  swing  and  rampant  delight  in 
life,  while  their  voices  as  they  talked 
in  the  side-caverns  among  the  stands 
of  arms  were  the  controlled  voices  of 
civilization.  Yet,  as  the  lights 
pierced  the  gloom  they  looked  like 
bandits  dividing  the  spoil.  One  pic- 
ture, though  far  from  war,  stays 
with  me.  A  perfectly  built,  dark- 
skinned  young  giant  had  peeled  him- 
self out  of  his  blue  coat  and  had 
brought  it  down  with  a  swish  upon 


FRANCE   AT    WAR  21 

the  shoulder  of  a  half-stripped  com- 
rade who  was  kneeling  at  his  feet 
busy  with  some  footgear.  They 
stood  against  a  background  of  semi- 
luminous  blue  haze,  through  which 
glimmered  a  pile  of  coppery  straw 
half  covered  by  a  red  blanket.  By 
divine  accident  of  light  and  pose  it 
was  St.  Martin  giving  his  cloak  to  the 
beggar.  There  were  scores  of  pic- 
tures in  these  galleries — notably  a 
rock-hewn  chapel  where  the  red  of 
the  cross  on  the  rough  canvas  altar- 
cloth  glowed  like  a  ruby.  Further 
inside  the  caves  we  found  a  row  of 
little  rock-cut  kennels,  each  inhabited 
by  one  wise,  silent  dog.  Their  duties 
begin  at  night  with  the  sentinels  and 
listening-posts.  "And  believe  me," 
said  a  proud  instructor,  "my  fellow 


22  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

here  knows  the  difference  between 
the  noise  of  our  shells  and  the  Boche 
shells." 

When  we  came  out  into  the  open 
again  there  were  good  opportunities 
for  this  study.  Voices  and  wings 
met  and  passed  in  the  air,  and,  per- 
haps, one  strong  young  tree  had  not 
been  bending  quite  so  far  across  the 
picturesque  park-drive  when  we  first 
went  that  way. 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  an  officer,  "shells 
have  to  fall  somewhere,  and,"  he 
added  with  fine  toleration,  "it  is, 
after  all,  against  us  that  the  Boche 
directs  them.  But  come  you  and 
look  at  my  dug-out.  It's  the  most 
superior  of  all  possible  dug-outs." 

"No.  Come  and  look  at  our  mess. 
It's  the  Ritz  of  these  parts."     And 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  23 

they  joyously  told  how  they  had  got, 
or  procured,  the  various  fittings  and 
the  elegancies,  while  hands  stretched 
out  of  the  gloom  to  shake,  and  men 
nodded  welcome  and  greeting  all 
through  that  cheery  brotherhood  in 
the  woods. 

WORK   IN   THE   FIELDS 

The  voices  and  the  wings  were  still 
busy  after  lunch,  when  the  car 
slipped  past  the  tea-houses  in  the 
drive,  and  came  into  a  country  where 
women  and  children  worked  among 
the  crops.  There  were  large  raw 
shell  holes  by  the  wayside  or  in 
the  midst  of  fields,  and  often  a 
cottage  or  a  villa  had  been  smashed 
as  a  bonnet-box  is  smashed  by  an 
umbrella.     That    must    be    part    of 


24  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

Belial's  work  when  he  bellows  so 
truculently  among  the  hills  to  the 
north. 

We  were  looking  for  a  town  that 
lives  under  shell-fire.  The  regular 
road  to  it  was  reported  unhealthy 
— not  that  the  women  and  children 
seemed  to  care.  We  took  byways 
of  which  certain  exposed  heights 
and  corners  were  lightly  blinded  by 
wind-brakes  of  dried  tree-tops.  Here 
the  shell  holes  were  rather  thick  on 
the  ground.  But  the  women  and  the 
children  and  the  old  men  went  on 
with  their  work  with  the  cattle  and 
the  crops;  and  where  a  house  had 
been  broken  by  shells  the  rubbish 
was  collected  in  a  neat  pile,  and  where 
a  room  or  two  still  remained  usable, 
it   was   inhabited,   and   the   tattered 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  25 

window-curtains  fluttered  as  proudly 
as  any  flag.  And  time  was  when  I 
used  to  denounce  young  France  be- 
cause it  tried  to  kill  itself  beneath  my 
car  wheels;  and  the  fat  old  women 
who  crossed  roads  without  warning; 
and  the  specially  deaf  old  men  who 
slept  in  carts  on  the  wrong  side  of 
the  road!  Now,  I  could  take  off 
my  hat  to  every  single  soul  of  them, 
but  that  one  cannot  traverse  a  whole 
land  bareheaded.  The  nearer  we 
came  to  our  town  the  fewer  were  the 
people,  till  at  last  we  halted  in  a 
well-built  suburb  of  paved  streets 
where  there  was  no  Hfe  at  all.     .     . 

A   WRECKED   TOWN 

The    stillness    was    as    terrible    as 
the  spread  of  the  quick  busy  weeds 


26  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

between  the  paving-stones;  the  air 
smelt  of  pounded  mortar  and  crushed 
stone;  the  sound  of  a  footfall  echoed 
like  the  drop  of  a  pebble  in  a  well. 
At  first  the  horror  of  wrecked  apart- 
ment-houses and  big  shops  laid  open 
makes  one  waste  energy  in  anger. 
It  is  not  seemly  that  rooms  should 
be  torn  out  of  the  sides  of  buildings 
as  one  tears  the  soft  heart  out  of 
English  bread;  that  villa  roofs  should 
lie  across  iron  gates  of  private  ga- 
rages, or  that  drawing-room  doors 
should  flap  alone  and  disconnected 
between  two  emptinesses  of  twisted 
girders.  The  eye  wearies  of  the  re- 
peated pattern  that  burst  shells  make 
on  stone  walls,  as  the  mouth  sickens 
of  the  taste  of  mortar  and  charred 
timber.     One    quarter    of    the   place 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  27 

had  been  shelled  nearly  level;  the 
fagades  of  the  houses  stood  doorless, 
roofless,  and  windowless  like  stage 
scenery.  This  was  near  the  cathe- 
dral, which  is  always  a  favourite 
mark  for  the  heathen.  They  had 
gashed  and  ripped  the  sides  of  the 
cathedral  itself,  so  that  the  birds  flew 
in  and  out  at  will;  they  had  smashed 
holes  in  the  roof;  knocked  huge 
cantles  out  of  the  buttresses,  and 
pitted  and  starred  the  paved  square 
outside.  They  were  at  work,  too, 
that  very  afternoon,  though  I  do 
not  think  the  cathedral  was  their 
objective  for  the  moment.  We  walked 
to  and  fro  in  the  silence  of  the  streets 
and  beneath  the  whirring  wings  over- 
head. Presently,  a  young  woman, 
keeping  to  the  wall,  crossed  a  corner. 


28  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

An  old  woman  opened  a  shutter 
(how  it  jarred!)  ,  and  spoke  to  her. 
The  silence  closed  again,  but  it 
seemed  to  me  that  I  heard  a  sound 
of  singing— the  sort  of  chant  one 
hears  in  nightmare-cities  of  voices 
crying  from  underground. 

IN   THE   CATHEDRAL 

"Nonsense,"  said  an  ojQBcer.  "Who 
should  be  singing  here?"  We  cir- 
cled the  cathedral  again,  and  saw 
what  pavement-stones  can  do  against 
their  own  city,  when  the  shell  jerks 
them  upward.  But  there  tvas  sing- 
ing after  all — on  the  other  side  of  a 
little  door  in  the  flank  of  the  cathe- 
dral. We  looked  in,  doubting,  and 
saw  at  least  a  hundred  folk,  mostly 
women,   who  knelt  before  the  altar 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  29 

of  an  un wrecked  chapel.  We  with- 
drew quietly  from  that  holy  ground, 
and  it  was  not  only  the  eyes  of  the 
French  oflScers  that  filled  with  tears. 
Then  there  came  an  old,  old  thing 
with  a  prayer-book  in  her  hand,  pat- 
tering across  the  square,  evidently 
late  for  service. 

"And  who  are  those  women .f*"  I 
asked. 

"Some  are  caretakers;  people  who 
have  still  little  shops  here.  (There  is 
one  quarter  where  you  can  buy  things.) 
There  are  many  old  people,  too,  who 
will  not  go  away.  They  are  of  the 
place,  you  see." 

"And  this  bombardment  happens 
often.'*"  I  said. 

"It  happens  always.  Would  you 
like  to  look  at  the  railway  station? 


30  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

Of  course,  it  has  not  been  so  bom- 
barded as  the  cathedral." 

We  went  through  the  gross  naked- 
ness of  streets  without  people,  till  we 
reached  the  railway  station,  which 
was  very  fairly  knocked  about,  but,  as 
my  friends  said,  nothing  like  as  much 
as  the  cathedral.  Then  we  had  to 
cross  the  end  of  a  long  street  down 
which  the  Boche  could  see  clearly. 
As  one  glanced  up  it,  one  perceived 
how  the  weeds,  to  whom  men's  war 
is  the  truce  of  God,  had  come  back 
and  were  well  established  the  whole 
length  of  it,  watched  by  the  long  per- 
spective of  open,  empty  windows. 


II 

THE  NATION'S  SPIRIT 
AND  A  NEW  INHERITANCE 

We  left  that  stricken  but  unde- 
feated town,  dodged  a  few  miles  down 
the  roads  beside  which  the  women 
tended  their  cows,  and  dropped  into 
a  place  on  a  hill  where  a  Moroccan 
regiment  of  many  experiences  was  in 
billets. 

They  were  Mohammedans  baf- 
flingly  like  half  a  dozen  of  our  Indian 
frontier  types,  though  they  spoke 
no  accessible  tongue.  They  had,  of 
course,  turned  the  farm  buildings 
where  they  lay  into   a  little  bit  of 

31 


32  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

Africa  in  colour  and  smell.  They  had 
been  gassed  in  the  north;  shot  over 
and  shot  down,  and  set  up  to  be 
shelled  again;  and  their  officers  talked 
of  North  African  wars  that  we  had 
never  heard  of — sultry  days  against 
long  odds  in  the  desert  years  ago. 
"Afterward — is  it  not  so  with  you 
also? — we  get  our  best  recruits  from 
the  tribes  we  have  fought.  These 
men  are  children.  They  make  no 
trouble.  They  only  want  to  go  where 
cartridges  are  burnt.  They  are  of 
the  few  races  to  whom  fighting  is 
pleasure." 

"And  how  long  have  you  dealt 
with  them?" 

"A  long  time — a  long  time.  I 
helped  to  organize  the  corps.  I  am 
one  of  those  whose  heart  is  in  Africa." 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  33 

He  spoke  slowly,  almost  feeling  for  his 
French  words,  and  gave  some  order.  I 
shall  not  forget  his  eyes  as  he  turned  to 
a  huge,  brown,  Afreedee-like  Mussul- 
man hunkering  down  beside  his  accou- 
trements. He  had  two  sides  to  his  head, 
that  bearded,  burned,  slow-spoken 
officer,  met  and  parted  with  in  an 
hour. 

The  day  closed — (after  an  amazing 
interlude  in  the  chateau  of  a  dream, 
which  was  all  glassy  ponds,  stately 
trees,  and  vistas  of  white  and  gold 
saloons.  The  proprietor  was  some- 
body's chauffeur  at  the  front,  and  we 
drank  to  his  excellent  health) — at  a 
little  village  in  a  twilight  full  of  the 
petrol  of  many  cars  and  the  wholesome 
flavour  of  healthy  troops.  There 
is  no  better  guide  to  camp  than  one's 


34  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

own  thoughtful  nose;  and  though  I 
poked  mine  everywhere,  in  no  place 
then  or  later  did  it  strike  that  vile 
betraying  taint  of  underfed,  unclean 
men.     And  the  same  with  the  horses. 

THE    LINE    THAT    NEVER    SLEEPS 

It  is  difficult  to  keep  an  edge  after 
hours  of  fresh  air  and  experiences; 
so  one  does  not  get  the  most  from  the 
most  interesting  part  of  the  day — the 
dinner  with  the  local  headquarters. 
Here  the  professionals  meet — the 
Line,  the  Gunners,  the  Intelligence 
with  stupefying  photo-plans  of  the 
enemy's  trenches;  the  Supply;  the 
Staff,  who  collect  and  note  all  things, 
and  are  very  properly  chaffed;  and, 
be  sure,  the  Interpreter,  who,  by  force 
of    questioning    prisoners,    naturally 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  35 

develops  into  a  Sadducee.  It  is  their 
little  asides  to  each  other,  the  slang, 
and  the  half-words  which,  if  one  under- 
stood, instead  of  blinking  drowsily 
at  one's  plate,  would  give  the  day's 
history  in  little.  But  tire  and  the 
difficulties  of  a  sister  (not  a  foreign) 
tongue  cloud  everything,  and  one  goes 
to  billets  amid  a  murmur  of  voices,  the 
rush  of  single  cars  through  the  night, 
the  passage  of  battalions,  and  behind 
it  all,  the  echo  of  the  deep  voices 
calling  one  to  the  other,  along  the  line 
that  never  sleeps. 

The  ridge  with  the  scattered  pines 
might  have  hidden  children  at  play. 
Certainly  a  horse  would  have  been 
quite  visible,  but  there  was  no  hint 
of  guns,  except  a  semaphore  which 


36  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

announced  it  was  forbidden  to  pass 
that  way,  as  the  battery  was  firing. 
The  Boches  must  have  looked  for 
that  battery,  too.  The  ground  was 
pitted  with  shell  holes  of  all  cali- 
bres— some  of  them  as  fresh  as  mole- 
casts  in  the  misty  damp  morning; 
others  where  the  poppies  had  grown 
from  seed  to  flower  all  through  the 
summer. 

"And  where  are  the  guns?"  I  de- 
manded at  last. 

They  were  almost  under  one's 
hand,  their  ammunition  in  cellars 
and  dug-outs  beside  them.  As  far 
as  one  can  make  out,  the  75  gun  has 
no  pet  name.  The  bayonet  is  Rosalie 
the  virgin  of  Bayonne,  but  the  75,  the 
watchful  nurse  of  the  trenches  and 
little  sister  of  the  Line,  seems  to  be 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  37 

always  "  soixante-quinze."  Even  those 
who  love  her  best  do  not  insist  that  she 
i  s  beau  tif  ul .  Her  merits  are  French — ■ 
logic,  directness,  simplicity,  and  the 
supreme  gift  of  "occasionality."  She 
is  equal  to  everything  on  the  spur  of 
the  moment.  One  sees  and  studies 
the  few  appliances  which  make  her 
do  what  she  does,  and  one  feels  that 
any  one  could  have  invented  her. 

FAMOUS   FRENCH    75 's 

"As  a  matter  of  fact,"  says  a 
commandant,  "anybody — or,  rather, 
everybody  did.  The  general  idea  is 
after  such-and-such  system,  the  patent 
of  which  had  expired,  and  we  improved 
it;  the  breech  action,  with  slight  mod- 
ification, is  somebody  else's ;  the  sight- 
ing is  perhaps  a  little  special;  and  so  is 
the  traversing,  but,  at  bottom,  it  is 


38  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

only  an  assembly  of  variations  and  ar- 
rangements." 

That,  of  course,  is  all  that  Shakes- 
peare ever  got  out  of  the  alphabet. 
The  French  Artillery  make  their  own 
guns  as  he  made  his  plays.  It  is  just 
as  simple  as  that. 

"There  is  nothing  going  on  for 
the  moment;  it's  too  misty,"  said 
the  Commandant.  (I  fancy  that 
the  Boche,  being,  as  a  rule  methodical, 
amateurs  are  introduced  to  batteries 
in  the  Boche's  intervals.  At  least, 
there  are  hours  healthy  and  unhealthy 
which  vary  with  each  position.)  "But," 
the  Commandant  reflected  a  moment, 
"there  is  a  place — and  a  distance. 
Let  us  say  ..."  He  gave  a 
range. 

The  gun-servers  stood  back  with 


FRANCE   AT    WAR  39 

the  bored  contempt  of  the  profes- 
sional for  the  layman  who  intrudes 
on  his  mysteries.  Other  civilians 
had  come  that  way  before — had  seen, 
and  grinned,  and  complimented  and 
gone  their  way,  leaving  the  gunners 
high  up  on  the  bleak  hillside  to  grill 
or  mildew  or  freeze  for  weeks  and 
months.  Then  she  spoke.  Her  voice 
was  higher  pitched,  it  seemed,  than 
ours — with  a  more  shrewish  tang  to 
the  speeding  shell.  Her  recoil  was  as 
swift  and  as  graceful  as  the  shrug  of  a 
French-woman's  shoulders;  the  empty 
case  leaped  forth  and  clanged  against 
the  trail;  the  tops  of  two  or  three 
pines  fifty  yards  away  nodded  know- 
ingly to  each  other,  though  there  was 
no  wind. 

"They'll  be  bothered  down  below 


40  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

to  know  the  meaning  of  our  single 
shot.  We  don't  give  them  one  dose 
at  a  time  as  a  rule,"  somebody  laughed. 

We  waited  in  the  fragrant  silence. 
Nothing  came  back  from  the  mist 
that  clogged  the  lower  grounds,  though 
no  shell  of  this  war  was  ever  launched 
with  more  earnest  prayers  that  it 
might  do  hurt. 

Then  they  talked  about  the  lives 
of  guns;  what  number  of  rounds  some 
will  stand  and  others  will  not;  how 
soon  one  can  make  two  good  guns  out 
of  three  spoilt  ones,  and  what  crazy 
luck  sometimes  goes  with  a  single 
shot  or  a  blind  salvo. 

LESSON  FROM   THE    "  BOCHE  " 

A  shell  must  fall  somewhere,  and 
by  the  law  of  averages  occasionally 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  41 

lights  straight  as  a  homing  pigeon 
on  the  one  spot  where  it  can  wreck 
most.  Then  earth  opens  for  yards 
around,  and  men  must  be  dug  out, — 
some  merely  breathless,  who  shake 
their  ears,  swear,  and  carry  on,  and 
others  whose  souls  have  gone  loose 
among  terrors.  These  have  to  be 
dealt  with  as  their  psychology  de- 
mands, and  the  French  officer  is  a 
good  psychologist.  One  of  them  said : 
"Our  national  psychology  has  changed. 
I  do  not  recognize  it  myself." 

"What  made  the  change?" 

"The  Boche.  If  he  had  been  quiet 
for  another  twenty  years  the  world 
must  have  been  his — rotten,  but  all 
his.     Now  he  is  saving  the  world." 

"How?" 

"Because   he  has  shown  us   what 


42  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

Evil  is.  We — you  and  I,  England  and 
the  rest — had  begun  to  doubt  the  exist- 
ence of  Evil .  The  Boche  is  saving  us. " 
Then  we  had  another  look  at  the 
animal  in  its  trench — a  little  nearer  this 
time  than  before,  and  quieter  on  ac- 
count of  the  mist.  Pick  up  the  chain 
anywhere  you  please,  you  shall  find 
the  same  observation-post,  table,  map, 
observer,  and  telephonist;  the  same 
always-hidden,  always-ready  guns; 
and  same  vexed  foreshore  of  trenches, 
smoking  and  shaking  from  Switzerland 
to  the  sea.  The  handling  of  the  war 
varies  with  the  nature  of  the  country, 
but  the  tools  are  unaltered.  One 
looks  upon  them  at  last  with  the  same 
weariness  of  wonder  as  the  eye  re- 
ceives from  endless  repetitions  of 
Egyptian  hieroglyphics.     A  long,  low 


FRANCE   AT    WAR  43 

profile,  with  a  lump  to  one  side,  means 
the  field-gun  and  its  attendant  am- 
munition-case; a  circle  and  slot 
stand  for  an  observation-post;  the 
trench  is  a  bent  line,  studded  with 
vertical  plumes  of  explosion;  the  great 
guns  of  position,  coming  and  going 
on  their  motors,  repeat  themselves 
as  scarabs;  and  man  himself  is  a 
small  blue  smudge,  no  larger  than  a 
foresight,  crawling  and  creeping  or 
watching  and  running  among  all  these 
terrific  symbols. 

TRAGEDY   OF   RHEIMS 

But  there  is  no  hieroglyphic  for 
Rheims,  no  blunting  of  the  mind  at 
the  abominations  committed  on  the 
cathedral  there.  The  thing  peers 
upward,  maimed  and   blinded,  from 


44  FBANCX    AT    WjLR 

oat  of  the  utter  wreckage  of  the  Arch- 
bishop's palace  on  the  one  side  and 
dust -heaps  of  crumbled  houses  on  the 
otho".  They  shelled,  as  they  stiU 
shell  it,  with  high  explosives  and  with 
incendiary  shells,  so  that  the  statues 
and  the  stonework  in  places  are  burned 
the  ocdour  of  raw  flesh.  The  gai^yles 
are  smashed:  statues,  crockets,  and 
spires  tumbled:  walls  split  and  torn; 
wiiidows  thrust  out  and  tracery  oblit- 
erated. Wherever  one  lodks  at  the 
tortured  pile  there  is  mutilation  and 
defilement,  and  yet  it  had  never  more 
of  a  soul  thfiTi  it  has  to-day. 

Inside — ^"  Cover  yourselves,  gen- 
tlemen,*' said  the  sacristan,  "this 
place  is  no  longer  consecrated") — 
everytlung  is  swept  dear  or  burned 
out  from  end  to  end,  except  two  can- 


dksticks  in  front  ol  the  niche  wto^ 
Joan  of  Arc's  image  used  to  stand. 
Thoe  is  a  French  flag  liiere  now. 
[And  the  last  time  I  saw  Khpfma 
Cathedral  was  ia  a  spring  twil^ht, 
when  the  great  west  window  glowed, 
and  the  onlv  lights  within  were  those 
of  candles  which  seme  penitent 
English  had  Ht  iQ  Joan's  homoor  on 
those  same  candlesticks.]  The  h^i 
altar  was  covered  with  flocw-carpets; 
the  pavement  tiles  were  oracked  and 
jarred  ont  by  the  mbbish  that  had 
fallen  from  above,  the  floor  was  grittv 
with  dust  of  ^ass  and  powd«ed  stone, 
little  twists  of  leading  from  the  wiq- 
dows,  and  iron  fragmoits.  Two  great 
doors  had  been  blown  inwards  bv  the 
blast  of  a  shell  in  the  Archbishop's 
garden,  till  thev  had  beit  grotesquely 


46  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

to  the  curve  of  a  cask.  There  they 
had  jammed.  The  windows — but  the 
record  has  been  made,  and  will  be  kept 
by  better  hands  than  mine.  It  will 
last  through  the  generation  in  which 
the  Teuton  is  cut  off  from  the  fellow- 
ship of  mankind — all  the  long,  still 
years  when  this  war  of  the  body  is 
at  an  end,  and  the  real  war  begins. 
Rheims  is  but  one  of  the  altars  which 
the  heathen  have  put  up  to  commem- 
orate their  own  death  throughout  all 
the  world.  It  will  serve.  There  is  a 
mark,  well  known  by  now,  which 
they  have  left  for  a  visible  seal  of 
'their  doom.  When  they  first  set 
the  place  alight  some  hundreds  of  their 
wounded  were  being  tended  in  the 
Cathedral .  The  French  saved  as  many 
as  they  could,  but  some  had  to  be  left. 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  47 

Among  them  was  a  major,  who  lay 
with  his  back  against  a  pillar.  It 
has  been  ordained  that  the  signs  of 
his  torments  should  remain — an  out- 
line of  both  legs  and  half  a  body, 
printed  in  greasy  black  upon  the 
stones.  There  are  very  many  peo- 
ple who  hope  and  pray  that  the  sign 
will  be  respected  at  least  by  our  chil- 
dren's children. 

IRON   NERVE   AND   FAITH 

And,  in  the  meantime,  Rheims  goes 
about  what  business  it  may  have 
with  that  iron  nerve  and  endurance 
and  faith  which  is  the  new  inheri- 
tance of  France.  There  is  agony 
enough  when  the  big  shells  come  in; 
there  is  pain  and  terror  among  the 
people;  and  always  fresh  desecration 


48  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

to  watch  and  suffer.  The  old  men 
and  the  women  and  the  children 
drink  of  that  cup  daily,  and  yet  the  bit- 
terness does  not  enter  into  their 
souls.  Mere  words  of  admiration 
are  impertinent,  but  the  exquisite 
quality  of  the  French  soul  has  been 
the  marvel  to  me  throughout.  They 
say  themselves,  when  they  talk:  "We 
did  not  know  what  our  nation  was. 
Frankly,  we  did  not  expect  it  our- 
selves .  B  ut  the  thing  came,  and — you 
see,  we  go  on," 

Or  as  a  woman  put  it  more  logi- 
cally, "What  else  can  we  do.'^  Re- 
member, we  knew  the  Boche  in  '70 
when  you  did  not.  We  know  what 
he  has  done  in  the  last  year.  This  is 
not  war.  It  is  against  wild  beasts 
that  we  fight.     There  is  no  arrange- 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  49 

ment  possible  with  wild  beasts." 
This  is  the  one  vital  point  which  we 
in  England  must  realize.  We  are 
dealing  with  animals  who  have  scien- 
tifically and  philosophically  removed 
themselves  inconceivably  outside  civ- 
ilization. When  you  have  heard  a 
few — only  a  few — tales  of  their  doings, 
you  begin  to  understand  a  little. 
When  you  have  seen  Rheims,  you 
understand  a  little  more.  When  you 
have  looked  long  enough  at  the  faces 
of  the  women,  you  are  inclined  to 
think  that  the  women  will  have  a 
large  say  in  the  final  judgment.  They 
have  earned  it  a  thousand  times. 


Ill 

BATTLE  SPECTACLE  AND 
A  REVIEW 

Travelling  with  two  chauffeurs  is 
not  the  luxury  it  looks;  since  there 
is  only  one  of  you  and  there  is  always 
another  of  those  iron  men  to  relieve 
the  wheel.  Nor  can  I  decide  whether 
an  ex-professor  of  the  German  tongue, 
or  an  ex-roadracer  who  has  lived  six 
years  abroad,  or  a  Marechal  des  Logis, 
or  a  Brigadier  makes  the  most  thrust- 
ing driver  through  three-mile  stretches 
of  military  traflSc  repeated  at  half -hour 
intervals.  Sometimes  it  was  motor- 
ambulances  strung  all  along  a  level;  or 

50 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  51 

supply ;  or  those  eternal  big  guns  com- 
ing round  corners  with  trees  chained  on 
their  long  backs  to  puzzle  aeroplanes, 
and  their  leafy,  big-shell  limbers  snort- 
ing behind  them.  In  the  rare  breath- 
ing-spaces men  with  rollers  and  road 
metal  attacked  the  road.  In  peace  the 
roads  of  France,  thanks  to  the  motor, 
were  none  too  good.  In  war  they 
stand  the  incessant  traffic  far  better 
than  they  did  with  the  tourist.  My 
impression — after  some  seven  hundred 
miles  printed  off  on  me  at  between  60 
and  70  kilometres — was  of  uniform  ex- 
cellence. Nor  did  I  come  upon  any 
smashes  or  breakdowns  in  that  dis- 
tance, and  they  were  certainly  trying 
them  hard.  Nor,  which  is  the  greater 
marvel,  did  we  kill  anybody;  though  we 
did  miracles  down  the  streets  to  avoid 


52  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

babes,  kittens,  and  chickens.  The 
land  is  used  to  every  detail  of  war, 
and  to  its  grime  and  horror  and  make- 
shifts, but  also  to  war's  unbounded 
courtesy,  kindness,  and  long-suffering, 
and  the  gaiety  that  comes,  thank 
God,  to  balance  overwhelming  ma- 
terial loss. 

FARM   LIFE   AlVODST   WAR 

There  was  a  village  that  had  been 
stamped  flat,  till  it  looked  older  than 
Pompeii.  There  were  not  three  roofs 
left,  nor  one  whole  house.  In  most 
places  you  saw  straight  into  the 
cellars.  The  hops  were  ripe  in 
the  grave-dotted  fields  round  about. 
They  had  been  brought  in  and  piled 
in  the  nearest  outline  of  a  dwelling. 
Women  sat  on  chairs  on  the  pave- 


FRANCE   AT    WAR  53 

ment,  picking  the  good-smelling  bun- 
dles. When  they  had  finished  one, 
they  reached  back  and  pulled  out 
another  through  the  window-hole  be- 
hind them,  talking  and  laughing  the 
while.  A  cart  had  to  be  manoeuvred 
out  of  what  had  been  a  farmyard, 
to  take  the  hops  to  market.  A  thick, 
broad,  fair-haired  wench,  of  the  sort 
that  Millet  drew,  flung  all  her  weight 
on  a  spoke  and  brought  the  cart 
forward  into  the  street.  Then  she 
shook  herself,  and,  hands  on  hips, 
danced  a  little  defiant  jig  in  her  sa- 
bots as  she  went  back  to  get  the  horse. 
Another  girl  came  across  a  bridge. 
She  was  precisely  of  the  opposite  type, 
slender,  creamy-skinned,  and  deli- 
cate-featured. She  carried  a  brand- 
new  broom  over  her  shoulder  through 


54  PRANCE    AT    WAR 

that  desolation,  and  bore  herself  with 
the  pride  and  grace  of  Queen  Iseult. 

The  farm-girl  came  out  leading  the 
horse,  and  as  the  two  young  things 
passed  they  nodded  and  smiled  at  each 
other,  with  the  delicate  tangle  of  the 
hop-vines  at  their  feet. 

The  guns  spoke  earnestly  in  the 
north.  That  was  the  Argonne,  where 
the  Crown  Prince  was  busily  getting 
rid  of  a  few  thousands  of  his  father's 
faithful  subjects  in  order  to  secure 
himself  the  reversion  of  his  father  s 
throne.  No  man  likes  losing  his 
job,  and  when  at  long  last  the  inner 
history  of  this  war  comes  to  be 
written,  we  may  find  that  the  people 
we  mistook  for  principals  and  prime 
agents  were  only  average  incompe- 
tents moving  all  Hell  to  avoid  dis- 


FRANCE   AT    WAR  55 

missal.  (For  it  is  absolutely  true 
that  when  a  man  sells  his  soul  to 
the  devil  he  does  it  for  the  price  of 
half  nothing.) 

WATCHING   THE   GUN-FIRE 

It  must  have  been  a  hot  fight.  A 
village,  wrecked  as  is  usual  along  this 
line,  opened  on  it  from  a  hillside  that 
overlooked  an  Italian  landscape  of 
carefully  drawn  hills  studded  with 
small  villages — a  plain  with  a 
road  and  a  river  in  the  foreground, 
and  an  all-revealing  afternoon  light 
upon  everything.  The  hills  smoked 
and  shook  and  bellowed.  An  ob- 
servation-balloon climbed  up  to  see; 
while  an  aeroplane  which  had  nothing 
to  do  with  the  strife,  but  was  merely 
training     a     beginner,    ducked    and 


56  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

swooped  on  the  edge  of  the  plain. 
Two  rose-pink  pillars  of  crumbled 
masonry,  guarding  some  carefully 
trimmed  evergreens  on  a  lawn  half  bur- 
ied in  rubbish,  represented  an  hotel 
where  the  Crown  Prince  had  once 
stayed.  All  up  the  hillside  to  our  right 
the  foundations  of  houses  lay  out,  like  a 
bit  of  tripe,  with  the  sunshine  in  their 
square  hollows.  Suddenly  a  band  be- 
gan to  play  up  the  hill  among  some 
trees ;  and  an  officer  of  local  Guards  in 
the  new  steel  anti-shrapnel  helmet, 
which  is  like  the  seventeenth  century 
sallet,  suggested  that  we  should  climb 
and  get  a  better  view.  He  was  a  kindly 
man,  and  in  speaking  English  had 
discovered  (as  I  do  when  speaking 
French)  that  it  is  simpler  to  stick 
to  one  gender.     His  choice  was  the 


FRANCE   AT    WAR  57 

feminine,  and  the  Boche  described 
as  "she"  throughout  made  me  think 
better  of  myself,  which  is  the  essence 
of  friendship.  We  climbed  a  flight 
of  old  stone  steps,  for  generations 
the  playground  of  little  children,  and 
found  a  ruined  church,  and  a  bat- 
talion in  billets,  recreating  them- 
selves with  excellent  music  and  a 
little  horseplay  on  the  outer  edge  of 
the  crowd.  The  trouble  in  the  hills 
was  none  of  their  business  for  that 
day. 

Still  higher  up,  on  a  narrow  path 
among  the  trees,  stood  a  priest  and 
three  or  four  officers.  They  watched 
the  battle  and  claimed  the  great 
bursts  of  smoke  for  one  side  or  the 
other,  at  the  same  time  as  they  kept 
an   eye   on   the  flickering  aeroplane. 


58  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

"Ours,"  they  said,  half  under  their 
breath.  "Theirs."  "No,  not  ours 
that  one — theirs!  .  .  .  That  fool 
is  banking  too  steep  .  .  .  That's 
Boche  shrapnel.  They  always  burst 
it  high.  That's  our  big  gun  behind 
that  outer  hill  .  .  .  He'll  drop 
his  machine  in  the  street  if  he  doesn't 
take  care.  .  .  .  There  goes  a 
trench-sweeper.  Those  last  two  were 
theirs,  but  thaf — it  was  a  full  roar — 
"was  ours." 

BEHIND    THE    GERMAN    LINES 

The  valley  held  and  increased  the 
sounds  till  they  seemed  to  hit  our 
hillside  like  a  sea. 

A  change  of  light  showed  a  village, 
exquisitely  pencilled  atop  of  a  hill, 
with  reddish  haze  at  its  feet. 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  59 

"What  is  that  place?"  I  asked. 

The   priest   replied   in   a   voice   as 

deep  as  an  organ:  "That  is  Saint 

It  is  in  the  Boche  lines.  Its  con- 
dition is  pitiable." 

The  thunders  and  the  smokes  rolled 
up  and  diminished  and  renewed  them- 
selves, but  the  small  children  romped 
up  and  down  the  old  stone  steps; 
the  beginner's  aeroplane  unsteadily 
chased  its  own  shadow  over  the  fields; 
and  the  soldiers  in  billet  asked  the 
band  for  their  favourite  tunes. 

Said  the  lieutenant  of  local  Guards 
as  the  cars  went  on:  "She — play — 
Tipperary," 

And  she  did — to  an  accompani- 
ment of  heavy  pieces  in  the  hills, 
which  followed  us  into  a  town  all 
ringed    with    enormous    searchlights. 


60  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

French  and  Boche  together,  scowling 
at  each  other  beneath  the  stars. 

It  happened  about  that  time  that 
Lord  Kitchener  with  General  Joffre 
reviewed  a  French  Army  Corps. 

We  came  on  it  in  a  vast  dip  of 
ground  under  grey  clouds,  as  one 
comes  suddenly  on  water;  for  it  lay 
out  in  misty  blue  lakes  of  men  mixed 
with  darker  patches,  like  osiers  and 
undergrowth,  of  guns,  horses,  and 
wagons.  A  straight  road  cut  the 
landscape  in  two  along  its  murmur- 
ing front. 

VETERANS   OF   THE   WAR 

It  was  as  though  Cadmus  had  sown 
the  dragon's  teeth,  not  in  orderly 
furrows  but  broadcast,  till,  horrified 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  61 

by  what  arose,  he  had  emptied  out 
the  whole  bag  and  fled.  But  these 
were  no  new  warriors.  The  record 
of  their  mere  pitched  battles  would 
have  satiated  a  Napoleon.  Their 
regiments  and  batteries  had  learnt 
to  achieve  the  impossible  as  a  matter 
of  routine,  and  in  twelve  months  they 
had  scarcely  for  a  week  lost  direct 
contact  with  death.  We  went  down 
the  line  and  looked  into  the  eyes  of 
those  men  with  the  used  bayonets 
and  rifles ;  the  packs  that  could  almost 
stow  themselves  on  the  shoulders 
that  would  be  strange  without  them; 
at  the  splashed  guns  on  their  repaired 
wheels,  and  the  easy- working  lim- 
bers. One  could  feel  the  strength 
and  power  of  the  mass  as  one  feels 
the  flush  of  heat  from  off  a  sunbaked 


62  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

wall.  When  the  Generals'  cars  ar- 
rived there,  there  was  no  loud  word 
or  galloping  about.  The  lakes  of 
men  gathered  into  straight-edged  bat- 
talions; the  batteries  aligned  a  little; 
a  squadron  reined  back  or  spurred 
up;  but  it  was  all  as  swiftly  smooth 
as  the  certainty  with  which  a  man 
used  to  the  pistol  draws  and  levels 
it  at  the  required  moment.  A  few 
peasant  women  saw  the  Generals 
alight.  The  aeroplanes,  which  had 
been  skimming  low  as  swallows  along 
the  front  of  the  line  (theirs  must  have 
been  a  superb  view)  ascended  lei- 
surely, and  "waited  on"  like  hawks. 
Then  followed  the  inspection,  and 
one  saw  the  two  figures,  tall  and  short, 
growing  smaller  side  by  side  along 
the  white  road,  till  far  off  among  the 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  63 

cavalry  they  entered  their  cars  again, 
and  moved  along  the  horizon  to  an- 
other rise  of  grey-green  plain. 

"The  army  will  move  across  where 
you  are  standing.  Get  to  a  flank," 
some  one  said. 

AN  ARMY   IN   MOTION 

We  were  no  more  than  well  clear  of 
that  immobile  host  when  it  all  surged 
forward,  headed  by  massed  bands 
playing  a  tune  that  sounded  like  the 
very  pulse  of  France. 

The  two  Generals,  with  their  Staff, 
and  the  French  Minister  for  War, 
were  on  foot  near  a  patch  of  very 
green  lucerne.  They  made  about 
twenty  figures  in  all.  The  cars  were 
little  grey  blocks  against  the  grey 
skyline.     There  was  nothing  else  in 


64  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

all  that  great  plain  except  the  army; 
no  sound  but  the  changing  notes  of 
the  aeroplanes  and  the  blunted  im- 
pression, rather  than  noise,  of  feet 
of  men  on  soft  ground.  They  came 
over  a  slight  ridge,  so  that  one  saw 
the  curve  of  it  first  furred,  then 
grassed,  with  the  tips  of  bayonets, 
which  immediately  grew  to  full  height, 
and  then,  beneath  them,  poured  the 
wonderful  infantry.  The  speed,  the 
thrust,  the  drive  of  that  broad  blue 
mass  was  like  a  tide-race  up  an  arm 
of  the  sea;  and  how  such  speed  could 
go  with  such  weight,  and  how  such 
weight  could  be  in  itself  so  absolutely 
under  control,  filled  one  with  terror. 
All  the  while,  the  band,  on  a  far 
headland,  was  telling  them  and  telling 
them  (as  if  they  did  not  know!)  of 


FRANCE   AT    WAR  65 

the  passion  and  gaiety  and  high  heart 
of  their  own  land  in  the  speech  that 
only  they  could  fully  understand. 
(To  hear  the  music  of  a  country  is 
like  hearing  a  woman  think  aloud.) 

"What  is  the  tune?"  I  asked  of  an 
oflScer  beside  me. 

"My  faith,  I  can't  recall  for  the 
moment.  I've  marched  to  it  often 
enough,  though.  'Sambre-et-Meuse,' 
perhaps.  Look!  There  goes  my  bat- 
talion!    Those  Chasseurs  yonder." 

He  knew,  of  course ;  but  what  could 
a  stranger  identify  in  that  earth- 
shaking  passage  of  thirty  thousand.'* 

ARTILLERY   AND    CAVALRY 

The  note  behind  the  ridge  changed 
to  something  deeper. 

"Ah!     Our  guns,"  said  an  artillery 


66  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

officer,  and  smiled  tolerantly  on  the 
last  blue  waves  of  the  Line  already 
beating  toward  the  horizon. 

They  came  twelve  abreast — one 
hundred  and  fifty  guns  free  for  the 
moment  to  take  the  air  in  company, 
behind  their  teams.  And  next  week 
would  see  them,  hidden  singly  or  in 
lurking  confederacies,  by  mountain 
and  marsh  and  forest,  or  the  wrecked 
habitations  of  men — where? 

The  big  guns  followed  them,  with 
that  long-nosed  air  of  detachment 
peculiar  to  the  breed.  The  Gunner 
at  my  side  made  no  comment.  He 
was  content  to  let  his  Arm  speak  for 
itself,  but  when  one  big  gun  in  a 
sticky  place  fell  out  of  alignment 
for  an  instant  I  saw  his  eyebrows 
contract.     The    artillery    passed    on 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  67 

with  the  same  inhuman  speed  and 
silence  as  the  Line;  and  the  Cavalry's 
shattering  trumpets  closed  it  all. 

They  are  like  our  Cavalry  in  that 
their  horses  are  m  high  condition, 
and  they  talk  hopefully  of  getting 
past  the  barbed  wire  one  of  these 
days  and  coming  into  their  own. 
Meantime,  they  are  employed  on 
"various  work  as  requisite,"  and 
they  all  sympathize  with  our  rough- 
rider  of  Dragoons  who  flatly  refused 
to  take  off  his  spurs  in  the  trenches. 
If  he  had  to  die  as  a  damned  infantry- 
man, he  wasn't  going  to  be  buried 
as  such.  A  troop-horse  of  a  flanking 
squadron  decided  that  he  had  had 
enough  of  war,  and  jibbed  like  Lot's 
wife.  His  rider  (we  all  watched  him) 
ranged  about  till  he  found  a  stick, 


68  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

which  he  used,  but  without  effect. 
Then  he  got  off  and  led  the  horse, 
which  was  evidently  what  the  brute 
wanted,  for  when  the  man  remounted 
the  jibbing  began  again.  The  last 
we  saw  of  him  was  one  immensely 
lonely  figure  leading  one  bad  but 
happy  horse  across  an  absolutely 
empty  world.  Think  of  his  reception 
— the  sole  man  of  40,000  who  had 
fallen  out! 

THE  BOCHE   AS   MR.    SMITH 

The  Commander  of  that  Army 
Corps  came  up  to  salute.  The  cars 
went  away  with  the  Generals  and  the 
Minister  for  War;  the  Army  passed 
out  of  sight  over  the  ridges  to  the 
north;  the  peasant  women  stooped 
again    to   their   work   in   the   fields. 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  69 

and  wet  mist  shut  down  on  all  the 
plain;  but  one  tingled  with  the 
electricity  that  had  passed.  Now 
one  knows  what  the  solidarity  of 
civilization  means.  Later  on  the  civ- 
ilized nations  will  know  more,  and 
will  wonder  and  laugh  together  at 
their  old  blindness.  When  Lord  Kit- 
chener went  down  the  line,  before 
the  march  past,  they  say  that  he 
stopped  to  speak  to  a  General  who 
had  been  Marchand's  Chief  of  Staff 
at  the  time  of  Fashoda.  And  Fa- 
shoda  was  one  of  several  cases  when 
civilization  was  very  nearly  manoeu- 
vred into  fighting  with  itself  "for 
the  King  of  Prussia,"  as  the  saying 
goes.  The  all-embracing  vileness  of 
the  Boche  is  best  realized  from  French 
soil,  where  they  have  had  large  expe- 


70  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

rience  of  it.  "And  yet,"  as  some  one 
observed,  "we  ought  to  have  known 
that  a  race  who  have  brought  anony- 
mous letter-writing  to  its  highest 
pitch  in  their  own  dirty  Court  affairs 
would  certainly  use  the  same  methods 
in  their  foreign  politics.  Why  didn't 
we  realize.''" 

"For  the  same  reason,"  another 
responded,  "that  society  did  not 
realize  that  the  late  Mr.  Smith,  of 
your  England,  who  married  three 
wives,  bought  baths  in  advance  for 
each  of  them,  and,  when  they  had 
left  him  all  their  money,  drowned 
them  one  by  one." 

"And  were  the  baths  by  any  chance 
called  Denmark,  Austria,  and  France 
in  1870?"  a  third  asked. 

"No,  they  were  respectable  British 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  71 

tubs.  But  until  Mr.  Smith  had 
drowned  his  third  wife  people  didn't 
get  suspicious.  They  argued  that 
'men  don't  do  such  things.'  That 
sentiment  is  the  criminal's  best  pro- 
tection." 


IV 

THE   SPIRIT   OF  THE  PEOPLE 

We  passed  into  the  zone  of  another 
army  and  a  hillier  country,  where  the 
border  villages  lay  more  sheltered. 
Here  and  there  a  town  and  the  fields 
round  it  gave  us  a  glimpse  of  the  furi- 
ous industry  with  which  France  makes 
and  handles  material  and  troops. 
With  her,  as  with  us,  the  wounded 
officer  of  experience  goes  back  to  the 
drill-ground  to  train  the  new  levies. 
But  it  was  always  the  little  crowded, 
defiant  villages,  and  the  civil  popu- 
lation waiting  unweariedly  and  cheer- 
fully on  the  unwearied,  cheerful  army, 

72 


FRANCE   AT    WAR  73 

that  went  closest  to  the  heart.  Take 
these  pictures,  caught  almost  any- 
where during  a  journey:  A  knot  of 
little  children  in  difficulties  with  the 
village  water-tap  or  high-handled 
pump.  A  soldier,  bearded  and  fa- 
therly, or  young  and  slim  and  there- 
fore rather  shy  of  the  big  girls'  chaff, 
comes  forward  and  lifts  the  pail  or 
swings  the  handle.  His  reward,  from 
the  smallest  babe  swung  high  in  air, 
or,  if  he  is  an  older  man,  pressed 
against  his  knees,  is  a  kiss.  Then 
nobody  laughs. 

Or  a  fat  old  lady  making  oration 
against  some  wicked  young  soldiers 
who,  she  says,  know  what  has  hap- 
pened to  a  certain  bottle  of  wine. 
"And  I  meant  it  for  all — yes,  for  all 
of  you — this  evening,  instead  of  the 


74  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

thieves  who  stole  it.  Yes,  I  tell  you 
— stole  it!"  The  whole  street  hears 
her;  so  does  the  officer,  who  pretends 
not  to,  and  the  amused  half-battalion 
up  the  road.  The  young  men  express 
penitence;  she  growls  like  a  thunder- 
storm, but,  softening  at  last,  cuffs 
and  drives  them  affectionately  before 
her.     They  are  all  one  family. 

Or  a  girl  at  work  with  horses  in  a 
ploughed  field  that  is  dotted  with 
graves.  The  machine  must  avoid 
each  sacred  plot.  So,  hands  on  the 
plough-stilts,  her  hair  flying  forward, 
she  shouts  and  wrenches  till  her  little 
brother  runs  up  and  swings  the  team 
out  of  the  furrow.  Every  aspect 
and  detail  of  life  in  France  seems 
overlaid  with  a  smooth  patina  of 
long-continued    war — everything    ex- 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  75 

cept  the  spirit  of  the  people,  and  that 
is  as  fresh  and  glorious  as  the  sight 
of  their  own  land  in  sunshine. 

A   CITY   AND   WOMAN 

We  found  a  city  among  hills  which 
knew  itself  to  be  a  prize  greatly 
coveted  by  the  Kaiser.  For,  truly, 
it  was  a  pleasant,  a  desirable,  and 
an  insolent  city.  Its  streets  were 
full  of  life;  it  boasted  an  establish- 
ment almost  as  big  as  Harrod's  and 
full  of  buyers,  and  its  women  dressed 
and  shod  themselves  with  care  and 
grace,  as  befits  ladies  who,  at  any 
time,  may  be  ripped  into  rags  by 
bombs  from  aeroplanes.  And  there 
was  another  city  whose  population 
seemed  to  be  all  soldiers  in  training; 
and  yet  another  given  up  to  big  guns 


76  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

and    ammunition — an    extraordinary 
sight. 

After  that,  we  came  to  a  little  town 
of  pale  stone  which  an  Army  had 
made  its  headquarters.  It  looked 
like  a  plain  woman  who  had  fainted 
in  public.  It  had  rejoiced  in  many 
public  institutions  that  were  turned 
into  hospitals  and  offices;  the 
wounded  limped  its  wide,  dusty 
streets,  detachments  of  Infantry  went 
through  it  swiftly;  and  utterly  bored 
motor-lorries  cruised  up  and  down 
roaring,  I  suppose,  for  something  to 
look  at  or  to  talk  to.  In  the  centre  of 
it  I  found  one  Janny,  or  rather  his 
marble  bust,  brooding  over  a  minute 
iron-railed  garden  of  half-dried  asters 
opposite  a  shut-up  school,  which  it 
appeared  from  the  inscription  Janny 


FRANCE   AT    WAR  77 

had  founded  somewhere  in  the  arid 
Thirties.  It  was  precisely  the  sort 
of  school  that  Janny,  by  the  look  of 
him,  would  have  invented.  Not  even 
French  adaptability  could  make  any- 
thing of  it.  So  Janny  had  his  school, 
with  a  faint  perfume  of  varnish,  all 
to  himself  in  a  hot  stillness  of  used-up 
air  and  little  whirls  of  dust.  And 
because  that  town  seemed  so  barren, 
I  met  there  a  French  General  whom 
I  would  have  gone  very  far  to  have 
encountered.  He,  like  the  others, 
had  created  and  tempered  an  army 
for  certain  work  in  a  certain  place, 
and  its  hand  had  been  heavy  on  the 
Boche.  We  talked  of  what  the 
French  woman  was,  and  had  done, 
and  was  doing,  and  extolled  her  for 
her  goodness  and  her  faith  and  her 


78  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

splendid  courage.  When  we  parted, 
I  went  back  and  made  my  profound- 
est  apologies  to  Janny,  who  must 
have  had  a  mother.  The  pale,  over- 
whelmed town  did  not  now  any 
longer  resemble  a  woman  who  had 
fainted,  but  one  who  must  endure  in 
public  all  manner  of  private  woe  and 
still,  with  hands  that  never  cease 
working,  keeps  her  soul  and  is  cleanly 
strong  for  herself  and  for  her  men. 

FRENCH    OFFICERS 

The  guns  began  to  speak  again 
among  the  hills  that  we  dived  into; 
the  air  grew  chillier  as  we  climbed; 
forest  and  wet  rocks  closed  round  us 
in  the  mist,  to  the  sound  of  waters 
trickling  alongside;  there  was  a  tang 
of  wet  fern,  cut  pine,  and  the  first 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  79 

breath  of  autumn  when  the  road 
entered  a  tunnel  and  a  new  world — 
Alsace. 

Said  the  Governor  of  those  parts 
thoughtfully:  "The  main  thing  was  to 
get  those  factory  chimneys  smoking 
again."  (They  were  doing  so  in  little 
flats  and  villages  all  along.)  "You 
won't  see  any  girls,  because  they're  at 
work  in  the  textile  factories.  Yes,  it 
isn't  a  bad  country  for  summer  hotels, 
but  I'm  afraid  it  won't  do  for  winter 
sports.  We've  only  a  metre  of  snow, 
and  it  doesn't  lie,  except  when  you 
are  hauling  guns  up  mountains.  Then, 
of  course,  it  drifts  and  freezes  like 
Davos.  That's  our  new  railway  be- 
low there.  Pity  it's  too  misty  to  see 
the  view." 

But    for    his    medals,    there    was 


80  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

nothing  in  the  Governor  to  show  that 
he  was  not  EngHsh.  He  might  have 
come  straight  from  an  Indian  frontier 
command. 

One  notices  this  approximation  of 
type  in  the  higher  ranks,  and  many  of 
the  juniors  are  cut  out  of  the  very  same 
cloth  as  ours.  They  get  whatever 
fun  may  be  going:  their  perform- 
ances are  as  incredible  and  outrage- 
ous as  the  language  in  which  they 
describe  them  afterward  is  bald,  but 
convincing,  and — I  overheard  the 
tail-end  of  a  yarn  told  by  a  child 
of  twenty  to  some  other  babes.  It 
was  veiled  in  the  obscurity  of  the 
French  tongue,  and  the  points  were 
lost  in  shouts  of  laughter — but  I 
imagine  the  subaltern  among  his 
equals  displays  just  as  much  rever- 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  81 

ence  for  his  elders  and  betters  as  our 
own  boys  do.  The  epilogue,  at  least, 
was  as  old  as  both  Armies : 

"And  what  did  he  say  then?" 
"Oh,  the  usual  thing.  He  held  his 
breath  till  I  thought  he'd  burst. 
Then  he  damned  me  in  heaps,  and  I 
took  good  care  to  keep  out  of  his 
sight  till   next  day." 

But  officially  and  in  the  high  social 
atmosphere  of  Headquarters  their 
manners  and  their  meekness  are  of 
the  most  admirable.  There  they  at- 
tend devoutly  on  the  wisdom  of  their 
seniors,  who  treat  them,  so  it  seemed, 
with  affectionate  confidence. 

FRONT    THAT    NEVER    SLEEPS 

When  the  day's  reports  are  in,  all 
along  the  front,  there  is  a  man,  expert 


82  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

in  the  meaning  of  things,  who  boils 
them  down  for  that  cold  official  di- 
gest which  tells  us  that  "There  was 

the    usual    grenade    fighting    at . 

We    made    appreciable    advance    at 

,"    &c.     The    original    material 

comes  in  sheaves  and  sheaves,  where 
individual  character  and  tempera- 
ment have  full  and  amusing  play. 
It  is  reduced  for  domestic  consump- 
tion like  an  overwhelming  electric 
current.  Otherwise  we  could  not 
take  it  in.  But  at  closer  range  one 
realizes  that  the  Front  never  sleeps; 
never  ceases  from  trying  new  ideas 
and  weapons  which,  so  soon  as  the 
Boche  thinks  he  has  mastered  them, 
are  discarded  for  newer  annoyances 
and  bewilderments. 

"The  Boche  is  above  all  things  ob- 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  83 

servant  and  imitative,"  said  one  who 
counted  quite  a  few  Boches  dead  on 
the  front  of  his  sector.  "When  you 
present  him  with  a  new  idea,  he 
thinks  it  over  for  a  day  or  two. 
Then  he  presents  his  riposte." 

"Yes,  my  General.  That  was  ex- 
actly what  he  did  to  me  when  I — 
did  so  and  so.  He  was  quite  silent 
for  a  day.  Then — he  stole  my  pat- 
ent." 

"And  you.?" 

"I  had  a  notion  that  he'd  do  that, 
so  I  had  changed  the  specification." 

Thus  spoke  the  Staff,  and  so  it  is 
among  the  junior  commands,  down  to 
the  semi-isolated  posts  where  boy- 
Napoleons  live  on  their  own,  through 
unbelievable  adventures.  They  are 
inventive  young  devils,  these  veterans 


84  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

of  21,  possessed  of  the  single  ideal — 
to  kill — which  they  follow  with  men 
as  single-minded  as  themselves.  Bat- 
tlefield tactics  do  not  exist;  when 
a  whole  nation  goes  to  ground  there 
can  be  none  of  the  "victories"  of  the 
old  bookish  days.  But  there  is  al- 
ways the  killing — the  well-schemed 
smashing  of  a  full  trench,  the  rushing 
out  and  the  mowing  down  of  its 
occupants;  the  unsuspicious  battalion 
far  in  the  rear,  located  after  two 
nights'  extreme  risk  alone  among  rub- 
bish of  masonry,  and  wiped  out  as  it 
eats  or  washes  itself;  and,  more  rarely, 
the  body  to  body  encounter  with 
animals  removed  from  the  protection 
of  their  machinery,  when  the  bayonets 
get  their  chance.  The  Boche  does 
not  at  all  like  meeting  men  whose 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  85 

womenfolk  he  has  dishonoured  or 
mutilated,  or  used  as  a  protection 
against  bullets.  It  is  not  that  these 
men  are  angry  or  violent.  They  do 
not  waste  time  in  that  way.  They 
kill  him. 

THE  BUSINESS  OF  WAR 

The  French  are  less  reticent  than 
we  about  atrocities  committed  by  the 
Boche,  because  those  atrocities  form 
part  of  their  lives.  They  are  not 
tucked  away  in  reports  of  Commis- 
sions, and  vaguely  referred  to  as  "too 
awful."  Later  on,  perhaps,  we  shall 
be  unreserved  in  our  turn.  But  they 
do  not  talk  of  them  with  any  bab- 
bling heat  or  bleat  or  make  funny 
little  appeals  to  a  "public  opinion" 
that,  like  the  Boche,  has  gone  under- 


86  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

ground.  It  occurs  to  me  that  this 
must  be  because  every  Frenchman 
has  his  place  and  his  chance,  direct 
or  indirect,  to  diminish  the  number 
of  Boches  still  alive.  Whether  he  lies 
out  in  a  sandwich  of  damp  earth, 
or  sweats  the  big  guns  up  the  crests 
behind  the  trees,  or  brings  the  fat, 
loaded  barges  into  the  very  heart  of 
the  city,  where  the  shell-wagons  wait, 
or  spends  his  last  crippled  years  at  the 
harvest,  he  is  doing  his  work  to  that 
end. 

If  he  is  a  civilian  he  may — as  he 
does — say  things  about  his  Govern- 
ment, which,  after  all,  is  very  like 
other  popular  governments.  (A  life- 
time spent  in  watching  how  the  cat 
jumps  does  not  make  lion-tamers.) 
But  there  is  very  little  human  rub- 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  87 

bish  knocking  about  France  to  hinder 
work  or  darken  counsel.  Above  all, 
there  is  a  thing  called  the  Honour 
of  Civilization,  to  which  France  is 
attached.  The  meanest  man  feels 
that  he,  in  his  place,  is  permitted 
to  help  uphold  it,  and,  I  think,  bears 
himself,  therefore,  with  new  dignity. 

A   CONTRAST   IN    TYPES 

This  is  written  in  a  garden  of 
smooth  turf,  under  a  copper  beech, 
beside  a  glassy  mill-stream,  where  sol- 
diers of  Alpine  regiments  are  writing 
letters  home,  while  the  guns  shout  up 
and  down  the  narrow  valleys. 

A  great  wolf-hound,  who  considers 
himself  in  charge  of  the  old-fashioned 
farmhouse,  cannot  understand  why 
his  master,  aged  six,  should  be  sitting 


88  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

on  the  knees  of  the  Mareehal  des 
Logis,  the  iron  man  who  drives  the 
big  car. 

"But  you  are  French,  httle  one?" 
says  the  giant,  with  a  yearning  arm 
round  the  child. 

"Yes,"  very  slowly  mouthing  the 
French  words;  "I — can't — speak — 
French — but — I — am — French." 

The  small  face  disappears  in  the 
big  beard. 

Somehow,  I  can't  imagine  the 
Mareehal  des  Logis  killing  babies — 
even  if  his  superior  oflScer,  now  sketch- 
ing the  scene,  were  to  order  him! 

The  great  building  must  once  have 
been  a  monastery.  Twilight  soft- 
ened its  gaunt  wings,  in  an  angle  of 
which  were  collected  fifty  prisoners. 


FRANCE   AT    WAR  89 

picked  up  among  the  hills  behind 
the  mists. 

They  stood  in  some  sort  of  mili- 
tary formation  preparatory  to  being 
marched  off.  They  were  dressed  in 
khaki,  the  colour  of  gassed  grass, 
that  might  have  belonged  to  any 
army.  Two  wore  spectacles,  and  I 
counted  eight  faces  of  the  fifty  which 
were  asymmetrical — out  of  drawing 
on  one  side. 

"Some  of  their  later  drafts  give  us 
that  type,"  said  the  Interpreter. 
One  of  them  had  been  wounded  in  the 
head  and  roughly  bandaged.  The 
others  seemed  all  sound.  Most  of 
them  looked  at  nothing,  but  several 
were  vividly  alive  with  terror  that 
cannot  keep  the  eyelids  still,  and  a  few 
wavered  on  the  grey  edge  of  collapse. 


90  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

They  were  the  breed  which,  at  the 
word  of  command,  had  stolen  out  to 
drown  women  and  children;  had 
raped  women  in  the  streets  at  the 
word  of  command;  and,  always  at 
the  word  of  command,  had  sprayed 
petrol,  or  squirted  flame;  or  defiled 
the  property  and  persons  of  their 
captives.  They  stood  there  outside 
all  humanity.  Yet  they  were  made 
in  the  likeness  of  humanity.  One 
realized  it  with  a  shock  when  the  band- 
aged creature  began  to  shiver,  and 
they  shuffled  off  in  response  to  the 
orders  of  civilized  men. 


LIFE   IN   TRENCHES   ON  THE 
MOUNTAIN  SIDE 

Very  early  in  the  morning  I  met 
Alan  Breck,  with  a  half-healed  bullet- 
scrape  across  the  bridge  of  his  nose, 
and  an  Alpine  cap  over  one  ear. 
His  people  a  few  hundred  years  ago 
had  been  Scotch.  He  bore  a  Scotch 
name,  and  still  recognized  the  head 
of  his  clan,  but  his  French  occasion- 
ally ran  into  German  words,  for  he 
was  an  Alsatian  on  one  side. 

"This,"  he  explained,  "is  the  very 
best  country  in  the  world  to  fight  in. 
It's  picturesque  and  full  of  cover.    I'm 

91 


92  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

a  gunner.  I've  been  here  for  months. 
It's  lovely." 

It  might  have  been  the  hills  under 
Mussoorie,  and  what  our  cars  ex- 
pected to  do  in  it  I  could  not  under- 
stand. But  the  demon-driver  who 
had  been  a  road-racer  took  the  70 
h.  p.  Mercedes  and  threaded  the  nar- 
row valleys,  as  well  as  occasional  half- 
Swiss  villages  full  of  Alpine  troops, 
at  a  restrained  thirty  miles  an 
hour.  He  shot  up  a  new-made  road, 
more  like  Mussoorie  than  ever,  and 
did  not  fall  down  the  hillside  even 
once.  An  ammunition-mule  of  a 
mountain-battery  met  him  at  a  tight 
corner,  and  began  to  climb  a 
tree. 

"See!  There  isn't  another  place 
in  France  where  that  could  happen," 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  93 

said  Alan.  "I  tell  you,  this  is  a 
magnificent    country." 

The  mule  was  hauled  down  by  his 
tail  before  he  had  reached  the  lower 
branches,  and  went  on  through  the 
woods,  his  ammunition-boxes  jinking 
on  his  back,  for  all  the  world  as 
though  he  were  rejoining  his  battery 
at  Jutogh.  One  expected  to  meet  the 
little  Hill  people  bent  under  their  loads 
under  the  forest  gloom.  The  light,  the 
colour,  the  smell  of  wood  smoke,  pine- 
needles,  wet  earth,  and  warm  mule  were 
all  Himalayan.  Only  the  Mercedes 
was  violently  and  loudly  a  stranger. 

"Halt!"  said  Alan  at  last,  when 
she  had  done  everything  except  imi- 
tate the  mule. 

"The  road  continues,"  said  the 
demon-driver  seductively. 


94  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

"Yes,  but  they  will  hear  you  if  you 
go  on.  Stop  and  wait.  We've  a 
mountain  battery  to  look  at." 

They  were  not  at  work  for  the 
moment,  and  the  Commandant,  a 
grim  and  forceful  man,  showed  me 
some  details  of  their  construction. 
When  we  left  them  in  their  bower — 
it  looked  like  a  Hill  priest's  wayside 
shrine — we  heard  them  singing 
through  the  steep-descending  pines. 
They,  too,  like  the  75 's,  seem  to  have 
no  pet  name  in  the  service. 

It  was  a  poisonously  blind  country. 
The  woods  blocked  all  sense  of  direc- 
tion above  and  around.  The  ground 
was  at  any  angle  you  please,  and  all 
sounds  were  split  up  and  muddied 
by  the  tree-trunks,  which  acted  as 
silencers.     High    above    us    the    re- 


FRANCE   AT    WAR  95 

spectable,  all-concealing  forest  had 
turned  into  sparse,  ghastly  blue  sticks 
of  timber — ^an  assembly  of  leper- 
trees  round  a  bald  mountain  top. 
"That's  where  we're  going,"  said 
Alan.  "Isn't  it  an  adorable  coun- 
try?" 

TRENCHES 

A  machine-gun  loosed  a  few  shots  in 
the  fumbling  style  of  her  kind  when 
they  feel  for  an  opening.  A  couple 
of  rifle  shots  answered.  They  might 
have  been  half  a  mile  away  or  a  hun- 
dred yards  below.  An  adorable  coun- 
try! We  climbed  up  till  we  found 
once  again  a  complete  tea-garden  of 
little  sunk  houses,  almost  invisible 
in  the  brown-pink  recesses  of  the 
thick  forest.  Here  the  trenches  be- 
gan, and  with  them  for  the  next  few 


96  FRANCE   AT    WAR 

hours  life  in  two  dimensions — length 
and  breadth.  You  could  have  eaten 
your  dinner  almost  anywhere  off  the 
swept  dry  ground,  for  the  steep  slopes 
favoured  draining,  there  was  no  lack 
of  timber,  and  there  was  unlimited 
labour.  It  had  made  neat  double- 
length  dug-outs  where  the  wounded 
could  be  laid  in  during  their  pas- 
sage down  the  mountain  side;  well- 
tended  occasional  latrines  properly 
limed;  dug-outs  for  sleeping  and 
eating;  overhead  protections  and  tool- 
sheds  where  needed,  and,  as  one  came 
nearer  the  working  face,  very  clever 
cellars  against  trench-sweepers.  Men 
passed  on  their  business ;  a  squad  with 
a  captured  machine-gun  which  they 
tested  in  a  sheltered  dip;  armourers 
at  their  benches  busy  with  sick  rifles; 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  97 

fatigue-parties  for  straw,  rations,  and 
ammunition;  long  processions  of  sin- 
gle blue  figures  turned  sideways  be- 
tween the  brown  sunless  walls.  One 
understood  after  a  while  the  night- 
mare that  lays  hold  of  trench-stale 
men,  when  the  dreamer  wanders  for 
ever  in  those  blind  mazes  till,  after 
centuries  of  agonizing  flight,  he  finds 
himself  stumbling  out  again  into  the 
white  blaze  and  horror  of  the  mined 
front — he  who  thought  he  had  al- 
most  reached   home ! 

IN    THE    FRONT    LINE. 

There  were  no  trees  above  us  now. 
Their  trunks  lay  along  the  edge  of  the 
trench,  built  in  with  stones,  where 
necessary,  or  sometimes  overhanging 
it  in  ragged  splinters  or  bushy  tops. 


98  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

Bits  of  cloth,  not  French,  showed,  too, 
in  the  uneven  Hnes  of  debris  at  the 
trench  lip,  and  some  thoughtful  soul 
had  marked  an  unexploded  Boche 
trench-sweeper  as  *'  not  to  be  touched." 
It  was  a  young  lawyer  from  Paris  who 
pointed  that  out  to  me. 

We  met  the  Colonel  at  the  head  of 
an  indescribable  pit  of  ruin,  full  of 
sunshine,  whose  steps  ran  down  a 
very  steep  hillside  under  the  lee  of 
an  almost  vertically  plunging  para- 
pet. To  the  left  of  that  parapet  the 
whole  hillside  was  one  gruel  of 
smashed  trees,  split  stones,  and  pow- 
dered soil.  It  might  have  been  a  rag- 
picker's dump-heap  on  a  colossal  scale. 

Alan  looked  at  it  critically.  I 
think  he  had  helped  to  make  it  not 
long  before. 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  99 

"We're  on  the  top  of  the  hill  now,  and 
the  Boches  are  below  us,"  said  he.  "  We 
gave  them  a  very  fair  sickener  lately." 

"This,"  said  the  Colonel,  "is  the 
front   line." 

There  were  overhead  guards  against 
hand-bombs  which  disposed  me  to  be- 
lieve him,  but  what  convinced  me 
most  was  a  corporal  urging  us  in 
whispers  not  to  talk  so  loud.  The 
men  were  at  dinner,  and  a  good  smell 
of  food  filled  the  trench.  This  was 
the  first  smell  I  had  encountered  in 
my  long  travels  uphill — a  mixed,  en- 
tirely wholesome  flavour  of  stew, 
leather,  earth,  and  rifle-oil. 

FRONT    LINE    PROFESSIONALS 

A  proportion  of  men  were  standing 
to  arms  while  others  ate;  but  dinner- 


100  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

time  is  slack  time,  even  among  ani- 
mals, and  it  was  close  on  noon. 

"The  Bodies  got  their  soup  a  few 
days  ago,"  some  one  whispered.  I 
thought  of  the  pulverized  hillside, 
and  hoped  it  had  been  hot  enough. 

We  edged  along  the  still  trench, 
where  the  soldiers  stared,  with  justi- 
fied contempt,  I  thought,  upon  the 
civilian  who  scuttled  through  their 
life  for  a  few  emotional  minutes  in 
order  to  make  words  out  of  their 
blood.  Somehow  it  reminded  me  of 
coming  in  late  to  a  play  and  incom- 
moding a  long  line  of  packed  stalls. 
The  whispered  dialogue  was  much 
the  same:  "Pardon!"  "I  beg  your 
pardon,  monsieur."  "To  the  right, 
monsieur."  "If  monsieur  will  lower 
his  head."     "One  sees  best  from  here. 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  101 

monsieur,"  and  so  on.  It  was  their 
day  and  night-long  business,  carried 
through  without  display  or  heat,  or 
doubt  or  indecision.  Those  who 
worked,  worked;  those  off  duty,  not 
five  feet  behind  them  in  the  dug-outs, 
were  deep  in  their  papers,  or  theirmeals 
or  their  letters;  while  death  stood  ready 
at  every  minute  to  drop  down  into  the 
narrow  cut  from  out  of  the  narrow  strip 
of  unconcerned  sky.  And  for  the  bet- 
ter part  of  a  week  one  had  skirted 
hundreds  of  miles  of  such  a  frieze! 

The  loopholes  not  in  use  were 
plugged  rather  like  old-fashioned 
hives.  Said  the  Colonel,  removing 
a  plug:  "Here  are  the  Boches.  Look, 
and  you'll  see  their  sandbags." 
Through  the  jumble  of  riven  trees 
and  stones  one  saw  what  might  have 


102  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

been  a  bit  of  green  sacking.  "They're 
about  seven  metres  distant  just  here," 
the  Colonel  went  on.  That  was 
true,  too.  We  entered  a  little  forta- 
lice  with  a  cannon  in  it,  in  an  em- 
brasure which  at  that  moment  struck 
me  as  unnecessarily  vast,  even  though 
it  was  partly  closed  by  a  frail  pack- 
ing-case lid.  The  Colonel  sat  him 
down  in  front  of  it,  and  explained  the 
theory  of  this  sort  of  redoubt.  "By 
the  way,"  he  said  to  the  gunner  at 
last,  "can't  you  find  something  bet- 
ter than  that?''  He  twitched  the 
lid  aside.  "I  think  it's  too  light. 
Get  a  log  of  wood  or  something." 

HANDY   TRENCH-SWEEPERS 

I  loved  that  Colonel !     He  knew  his 
men  and  he  knew  the  Boches — had 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  103 

them  marked  down  like  birds.  When 
he  said  they  were  beside  dead  trees 
or  behind  boulders,  sure  enough  there 
they  were!  But,  as  I  have  said,  the 
dinner-hour  is  always  slack,  and  even 
when  we  came  to  a  place  where  a  sec- 
tion of  trench  had  been  bashed  open 
by  trench-sweepers,  and  it  was  re- 
commended to  duck  and  hurry,  noth- 
ing much  happened.  The  uncanny 
thing  was  the  absence  of  movement 
in  the  Boche  trenches.  Sometimes 
one  imagined  that  one  smelt  strange 
tobacco,  or  heard  a  rifle-bolt  working 
after  a  shot.  Otherwise  they  were 
as  still  as  pig  at  noonday. 

We  held  on  through  the  maze,  past 
trench-sweepers  of  a  handy  light  pat- 
tern, with  their  screw-tailed  charge 
all  ready;  and  a  grave  or  so;  and  when 


104  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

I  came  on  men  who  merely  stood 
within  easy  reach  of  their  rifles,  I 
knew  I  was  in  the  second  line.  When 
they  lay  frankly  at  ease  in  their  dug- 
outs, I  knew  it  was  the  third.  A  shot- 
gun would  have  sprinkled  all  three. 

"No  flat  plains,"  said  Alan.  "No 
hunting  for  gun  positions — the  hills 
are  full  of  them — and  the  trenches 
close  together  and  commanding  each 
other.  You  see  what  a  beautiful 
country  it  is." 

The  Colonel  confirmed  this,  but 
from  another  point  of  view.  War 
was  his  business,  as  the  still  woods 
could  testify — but  his  hobby  was 
his  trenches.  He  had  tapped  the 
mountain  streams  and  dug  out  a 
laundry  where  a  man  could  wash  his 
shirt  and  go  up  and  be  killed  in  it, 


FEANCE    AT    WAR  105 

all  in  a  morning;  had  drained  the 
trenches  till  a  muddy  stretch  in  them 
was  an  offence;  and  at  the  bottom  of 
the  hill  (it  looked  like  a  hydropathic 
establishment  on  the  stage)  he  had 
created  baths  where  half  a  battalion 
at  a  time  could  wash.  He  never  told 
me  how  all  that  country  had  been 
fought  over  as  fiercely  as  Ypres  in 
the  West;  nor  what  blood  had  gone 
down  the  valleys  before  his  trenches 
pushed  over  the  scalped  mountain 
top.  No.  He  sketched  out  new  en- 
deavours in  earth  and  stones  and 
trees  for  the  comfort  of  his  men  on 
that  populous  mountain. 

And  there  came  a  priest,  who  was  a 
sub-lieutenant,  out  of  a  wood  of  snuff- 
brown  shadows  and  half -veiled  trunks. 
Would  it  please  me  to  look  at  a  chapel? 


106  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

It  was  all  open  to  the  hillside,  most 
tenderly  and  devoutly  done  in  rustic 
work  with  reedings  of  peeled  branches 
and  panels  of  moss  and  thatch — St. 
Hubert's  own  shrine.  I  saw  the 
hunters  who  passed  before  it,  going 
to  the  chase  on  the  far  side  of  the 
mountain  where  their  game  lay. 

A    BOMBARDED    TOWN 

Alan  carried  me  off  to  tea  the  same 
evening  in  a  town  where  he  seemed 
to  know  everybody.  He  had  spent 
the  afternoon  on  another  mountain 
top,  inspecting  gun  positions ;  whereby 
he  had  been  shelled  a  little — mar- 
mite  is  the  slang  for  it.  There  had 
been  no  serious  marmitage,  and  he 
had  spotted  a  Boche  position  which 
was  marmitahle. 


FRANCE   AT    WAR  107 

"And  we  may  get  shelled  now," 
he  added,  hopefully.  "They  shell 
this  town  whenever  they  think  of  it. 
Perhaps  they'll  shell  us  at  tea." 

It  was  a  quaintly  beautiful  little 
place,  with  its  mixture  of  French  and 
German  ideas;  its  old  bridge  and 
gentle-minded  river,  between  the  cul- 
tivated hills.  The  sand-bagged  cellar 
doors,  the  ruined  houses,  and  the  holes 
in  the  pavement  looked  as  unreal  as 
the  violences  of  a  cinema  against 
that  soft  and  simple  setting.  The 
people  were  abroad  in  the  streets, 
and  the  little  children  were  playing. 
A  big  shell  gives  notice  enough  for 
one  to  get  to  shelter,  if  the  shelter  is 
near  enough.  That  appears  to  be  as 
much  as  any  one  expects  in  the  world 
where  one  is  shelled,  and  that  world 


108  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

has  settled  down  to  it.  People's  lips 
are  a  little  firmer,  the  modelling  of 
the  brows  is  a  little  more  pronounced, 
and,  maybe,  there  is  a  change  in  the 
expression  of  the  eyes;  but  nothing 
that  a  casual  afternoon  caller  need 
particularly  notice. 

CASES   FOR   HOSPITAL 

The  house  where  we  took  tea  was 
the  "big  house"  of  the  place,  old 
and  massive,  a  treasure  house  of 
ancient  furniture.  It  had  everything 
that  the  moderate  heart  of  man  could 
desire — gardens,  garages,  outbuild- 
ings, and  the  air  of  peace  that  goes 
with  beauty  in  age.  It  stood  over  a 
high  cellarage,  and  opposite  the  cellar 
door  was  a  brand-new  blindage  of 
earth  packed  between  timbers.    The 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  109 

cellar  was  a  hospital,  with  its  beds  and 
stores,  and  under  the  electric  light  the 
orderly  waited  ready  for  the  cases  to 
be  carried  down  out  of  the  streets. 
"Yes,  they  are  all  civil  cases,"  said 

he. 

They  come  without  much  warning 
— a  woman  gashed  by  falling  timber; 
a  child  with  its  temple  crushed  by  a 
flying  stone;  an  urgent  amputation 
case,  and  so  on.  One  never  knows. 
Bombardment,  the  Boche  text-books 
say,  "is  designed  to  terrify  the  civil 
population  so  that  they  may  put 
pressure  on  their  politicians  to  con- 
clude peace."  In  real  life,  men  are 
very  rarely  soothed  by  the  sight  of 
their  women  being  tortured. 

We  took  tea  in  the  hall  upstairs, 
with  a  propriety  and  an  interchange 


110  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

of  compliments  that  suited  the  little 
occasion.  There  was  no  attempt  to 
disguise  the  existence  of  a  bombard- 
ment, but  it  was  not  allowed  to  over- 
weigh  talk  of  lighter  matters.  I 
know  one  guest  who  sat  through  it 
as  near  as  might  be  inarticulate  with 
wonder.  But  he  was  English,  and 
when  Alan  asked  him  whether  he 
had  enjoyed  himself,  he  said:  "Oh, 
yes.     Thank  you  very  much." 

"Nice  people,  aren't  they?"  Alan 
went   on. 

"Oh,  very  nice.  And — and  such 
good  tea." 

He  managed  to  convey  a  few  of  his 
sentiments  to  Alan  after  dinner. 

"But  what  else  could  the  people 
have  done.''"  said  he.  "They  are 
French." 


VI 

THE  COMMON  TASK  OF  A 
GREAT  PEOPLE 

"This  is  the  end  of  the  line,"  said 
the  Staff  OflBcer,  kindest  and  most 
patient  of  chaperons.  It  buttressed 
itself  on  a  fortress  among  hills.  Be- 
yond that,  the  silence  was  more  aw- 
ful than  the  mixed  noise  of  business 
to  the  westward.  In  mileage  on  the 
map  the  line  must  be  between  four 
and  five  hundred  miles;  in  actual 
trench-work  many  times  that  dis- 
tance. It  is  too  much  to  see  at  full 
length;  the  mind  does  not  readily 
break  away  from  the  obsession  of  its 
111 


112  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

entirety  or  the  grip  of  its  detail.  One 
visualizes  the  thing  afterwards  as  a 
white-hot  gash,  worming  all  across 
France  between  intolerable  sounds 
and  lights,  under  ceaseless  blasts  of 
whirled  dirt.  Nor  is  it  any  relief  to 
lose  oneself  among  wildernesses  of 
piling,  stoning,  timbering,  concreting, 
and  wire-work,  or  incalculable  quan- 
tities of  soil  thrown  up  raw  to  the 
light  and  cloaked  by  the  changing 
seasons — as  the  unburied  dead  are 
cloaked. 

Yet  there  are  no  words  to  give  the 
essential  simplicity  of  it.  It  is  the 
rampart  put  up  by  Man  against  the 
Beast,  precisely  as  in  the  Stone  Age. 
If  it  goes,  all  that  keeps  us  from  the 
Beast  goes  with  it.  One  sees  this  at 
the  front  as  clearly  as  one  sees  the 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  113 

French  villages  behind  the  German 
lines.  Sometimes  people  steal  away 
from  them  and  bring  word  of  what 
they  endure. 

Where  the  rifle  and  the  bayonet 
serve,  men  use  those  tools  along  the 
front.  Where  the  knife  gives  better 
results,  they  go  in  behind  the  hand- 
grenades  with  the  naked  twelve-inch 
knife.  Each  race  is  supposed  to 
fight  in  its  own  way,  but  this  war 
has  passed  beyond  all  the  known 
ways.  They  say  that  the  Belgians 
in  the  north  settle  accounts  with  a 
certain  dry  passion  which  has  varied 
very  little  since  their  agony  began. 
Some  sections  of  the  English  line  have 
produced  a  soft-voiced,  rather  re- 
served type,  which  does  its  work  with 
its  mouth  shut.     The  French  carry 


114  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

an  edge  to  their  fighting,  a  precision, 
and  a  dreadful  knowledge  coupled 
with  an  insensibility  to  shock,  unlike 
anything  one  has  imagined  of  man- 
kind. To  be  sure,  there  has  never 
been  like  provocation,  for  never  since 
the  iEsir  went  about  to  bind  the 
Fenris  Wolf  has  all  the  world  united 
to  bind  the  Beast. 

The  last  I  saw  of  the  front  was 
Alan  Breck  speeding  back  to  his  gun- 
positions  among  the  mountains;  and 
I  wondered  what  delight  of  what 
household  the  lad  must  have  been 
in  the  old  days. 

SUPPORTS   AND   RESERVES 

Then  we  had  to  work  our  way,  de- 
partment by  department,  against  the 
tides   of  men  behind   the  line — sup- 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  115 

ports  and  their  supports,  reserves  and 
reserves  of  reserves,  as  well  as  the 
masses  in  training.  They  flooded 
towns  and  villages,  and  when  we  tried 
short-cuts  we  found  them  in  every 
by-lane.  Have  you  seen  mounted 
men  reading  their  home  letters  with 
the  reins  thrown  on  the  horses'  necks, 
moving  in  absorbed  silence  through 
a  street  which  almost  said  "Hush!" 
to  its  dogs;  or  met,  in  a  forest,  a  pro- 
cession of  perfectly  new  big  guns, 
apparently  taking  themselves  from 
the  foundry  to  the  front  .^^ 

In  spite  of  their  love  of  drama,  there 
is  not  much  "window-dressing"  in 
the  French  character.  The  Boche, 
who  is  the  priest  of  the  Higher 
Counter- jumpery,  would  have  had 
half  the  neutral  Press  out  in  cars  to 


116  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

advertise  these  vast  spectacles  of 
men  and  material.  But  the  same 
instinct  as  makes  their  rich  farmers 
keep  to  their  smocks  makes  the 
French  keep  quiet. 

"This  is  our  affair,"  they  argue. 
"Everybody  concerned  is  taking  part 
in  it.  Like  the  review  you  saw  the 
other  day,  there  are  no  spectators." 

"But  it  might  be  of  advantage  if 
the  world  knew." 

Mine  was  a  foolish  remark.  There 
is  only  one  world  to-day,  the  world  of 
the  Allies.  Each  of  them  knows 
what  the  others  are  doing  and — the 
rest  doesn't  matter.  This  is  a  curious 
but  delightful  fact  to  realize  at  first 
hand.  And  think  what  it  will  be 
later,  when  we  shall  all  circulate 
among  each  other  and  open  our  hearts 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  117 

and  talk  it  over  in  a  brotherhood 
more  intimate  than  the  ties  of  blood! 
I  lay  that  night  at  a  little  French 
town,  and  was  kept  awake  by  a  man, 
somewhere  in  the  hot,  still  darkness, 
howling  aloud  from  the  pain  of  his 
wounds.  I  was  glad  that  he  was 
alone,  for  when  one  man  gives  way 
the  others  sometimes  follow.  Yet 
the  single  note  of  misery  was  worse 
than  the  baying  and  gulping  of  a 
whole  ward.  I  wished  that  a  dele- 
gation of  strikers  could  have  heard  it. 

That  a  civilian  should  be  in  the 
war  zone  at  all  is  a  fair  guarantee  of 
his  good  faith.  It  is  when  he  is 
outside  the  zone  unchaperoned  that 
questions  begin,  and  the  permits  are 
looked  into.     If  these  are  irregular — 


118  FRANCE   AT    WAR 

but  one  doesn't  care  to  contemplate 
it.  If  regular,  there  are  still  a  few 
counter-checks.  As  the  sergeant  at 
the  railway  station  said  when  he 
helped  us  out  of  an  impasse:  "You 
will  realize  that  it  is  the  most  undesir- 
able persons  whose  papers  are  of  the 
most  regular.  It  is  their  business 
you  see.  The  Commissary  of  Police 
is  at  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  if  you  will 
come  along  for  the  little  formality. 
Myself,  I  used  to  keep  a  shop  in  Paris. 
My  God,  these  provincial  towns  are 
desolating!" 

PARIS — AND    NO    FOREIGNERS 

He  would  have  loved  his  Paris  as 
we  found  it.  Life  was  renewing  it- 
self in  the  streets,  whose  drawing  and 
proportion    one    could    never    notice 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  119 

before.     People's  eyes,  and   the  wo- 
men's especially,  seemed  to  be  set  to  a 
longer  range,  a  more  comprehensive 
gaze.     One    would    have    said    they 
came  from  the  sea  or  the  mountains, 
where    things    are    few    and    simple, 
rather   than    from   houses.     Best   of 
all,  there  were  no  foreigners — the  be- 
loved city  for  the  first  time  was  French 
throughout  from  end  to  end.     It  felt 
like  coming  back  to  an  old  friend's 
house  for  a  quiet  talk  after  he  had 
got  rid  of  a  houseful  of  visitors.     The 
functionaries  and  police  had  dropped 
their  masks  of  oflBcial  politeness,  and 
were  just  friendly.     At  the  hotels,  so 
like  school  two  days  before  the  term 
begins,    the    impersonal    valet,    the 
chambermaid    of    the    set    two-franc 
smile,  and  the  unbending  head- waiter 


120  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

had  given  place  to  one's  own  brothers 
and  sisters,  full  of  one's  own  anxieties. 
"My  son  is  an  aviator,  monsieur. 
I  could  have  claimed  Italian  nation- 
ality for  him  at  the  beginning,  but 
he  would  not  have  it."  .  .  . 
"Both  my  brothers,  monsieur,  are 
at  the  war.  One  is  dead  already. 
And  my  fiance,  I  have  not  heard  from 
him  since  March.  He  is  cook  in  a 
battalion."  .  .  .  "Here  is  the 
wine-list,  monsieur.  Yes,  both  my 
sons  and  a  nephew,  and — I  have  no 
news  of  them,  not  a  word  of  news. 
My  God,  we  all  suffer  these  days." 
And  so,  too,  among  the  shops — the 
mere  statement  of  the  loss  or  the  grief 
at  the  heart,  but  never  a  word  of 
doubt,  never  a  whimper  of  despair. 
"Now  why,"  asked  a  shopkeeper, 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  121 

"does  not  our  Government,  or  your 
Government,  or  both  our  Govern- 
ments, send  some  of  the  British 
Army  to  Paris?  I  assure  you  we 
should  make  them  welcome." 

"Perhaps,"  I  began,  "you  might 
make  them  too  welcome." 

He  laughed.  "We  should  make 
them  as  welcome  as  our  own  army. 
They  would  enjoy  themselves."  I 
had  a  vision  of  British  officers,  each 
^dth  ninety  days'  pay  to  his  credit, 
and  a  damsel  or  two  at  home,  shop- 
ping consumedly. 

"And  also,"  said  the  shopkeeper, 
"the  moral  effect  on  Paris  to  see  more 
of  your  troops  would  be  very  good." 

But  I  saw  a  quite  English  Pro- 
vost-Marshal losing  himself  in  chase 
of  defaulters  of  the  New  Army  who 


122  FEANCE    AT    WAR 

knew  their  Paris!  Still,  there  is 
something  to  be  said  for  the  idea — 
to  the  extent  of  a  virtuous  brigade  or 
so.  At  present,  the  English  officer 
in  Paris  is  a  scarce  bird,  and  he  ex- 
plains at  once  why  he  is  and  what  he 
is  doing  there.  He  must  have  good 
reasons.  I  suggested  teeth  to  an 
acquaintance.  "No  good,"  he  grum- 
bled. "They've  thought  of  that, 
too.  Behind  our  lines  is  simply 
crawling  with  dentists  now!" 

A  PEOPLE  TRANSFIGURED 

If  one  asked  after  the  people  that 
gave  dinners  and  dances  last  year, 
where  every  one  talked  so  brilliantly 
of  such  vital  things,  one  got  in  return 
the  addresses  of  hospitals.  Those 
pleasant  hostesses  and  maidens  seemed 


FRANCE   AT    WAR  123 

to  be  in  charge  of  departments 
or  on  duty  in  wards,  or  kitchens,  or 
sculleries.  Some  of  the  hospitals  were 
in  Paris.  (Their  staffs  might  have 
one  hour  a  day  in  which  to  see  visi- 
tors.) Others  were  up  the  line,  and 
liable  to  be  shelled  or  bombed. 

I  recalled  one  Frenchwoman  in 
particular,  because  she  had  once  ex- 
plained to  me  the  necessities  of  civil- 
ized life.  These  included  a  masseuse, 
a  manicurist,  and  a  maid  to  look 
after  the  lapdogs.  She  is  employed 
now,  and  has  been  for  months  past, 
on  the  disinfection  and  repair  of  sol- 
diers' clothes.  There  was  no  need 
to  ask  after  the  men  one  had  known. 
Still,  there  was  no  sense  of  desolation. 
They  had  gone  on;  the  others  were 
getting   ready. 


124  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

All  France  works  outward  to  the 
Front — precisely  as  an  endless  chain 
of  fire-buckets  works  toward  the 
conflagration.  Leave  the  fire  behind 
you  and  go  back  till  you  reach  the 
source  of  supplies.  You  will  find 
no  break,  no  pause,  no  apparent 
haste,  but  never  any  slackening. 
Everybody  has  his  or  her  bucket, 
little  or  big,  and  nobody  disputes 
how  they  should  be  used.  It  is  a 
people  possessed  of  the  precedent  and 
tradition  of  war  for  existence,  accus- 
tomed to  hard  living  and  hard  labour, 
sanely  economical  by  temperament, 
logical  by  training,  and  illumined 
and  transfigured  by  their  resolve  and 
endurance. 

You  know,  when  supreme  trial 
overtakes  an  acquaintance  whom  till 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  125 

tlien  we  conceived  we  knew,  how  the 
man's  nature  sometimes  changes  past 
knowledge  or  beHef.  He  who  was 
altogether  such  an  one  as  ourselves 
goes  forward  simply,  even  lightly, 
to  heights  we  thought  unattainable. 
Though  he  is  the  very  same  comrade 
that  lived  our  small  life  with  us,  yet 
in  all  things  he  has  become  great. 
So  it  is  with  France  to-day.  She  has 
discovered  the  measure  of  her  soul. 

THE   NEW   WAR 

One  sees  this  not  alone  in  the — it  is 
more  than  contempt  of  death — in  the 
godlike  preoccupation  of  her  people 
under  arms  which  makes  them  put 
death  out  of  the  account,  but  in  the 
equal  passion  and  fervour  with  which 
her    people    throughout    give    them- 


126  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

selves  to  the  smallest  as  well  as  the 
greatest  tasks  that  may  in  any  way 
serve  their  sword.  I  might  tell  you 
something  that  I  saw  of  the  cleaning 
out  of  certain  latrines;  of  the  educa- 
tion and  antecedents  of  the  cleaners; 
what  they  said  in  the  matter  and  how 
perfectly  the  work  was  done.  There 
was  a  little  Rabelais  in  it,  naturally, 
but  the  rest  was  pure  devotion,  re- 
joicing to  be  of  use. 

Similarly  with  stables,  barricades, 
and  barbed-wire  work,  the  clearing 
and  piling  away  of  wrecked  house- 
rubbish,  the  serving  of  meals  till  the 
service  rocks  on  its  poor  tired  feet, 
but  keeps  its  temper;  and  all  the  un- 
lovely, monotonous  details  that  go 
with  war. 

The  women,  as  I  have  tried  to  show, 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  127 

work  stride  for  stride  with  the  men, 
with  hearts  as  resolute  and  a  spirit 
that  has  httle  mercy  for  short- 
comings. A  woman  takes  her  place 
wherever  she  can  relieve  a  man — 
in  the  shop,  at  the  posts,  on  the 
tramways,  the  hotels,  and  a  thousand 
other  businesses.  She  is  inured  to 
field-work,  and  half  the  harvest  of 
France  this  year  lies  in  her  lap.  One 
feels  at  every  turn  how  her  men  trust 
her.  She  knows,  for  she  shares 
everything  with  her  world,  what  has 
befallen  her  sisters  who  are  now  in  Ger- 
man hands,  and  her  soul  is  the  undy- 
ing flame  behind  the  men's  steel. 
Neither  men  nor  women  have  any 
illusion  as  to  miracles  presently  to  be 
performed  which  shall  "sweep  out" 
or  "drive  back"  the  Boche.     Since 


128  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

the  Army  is  the  Nation,  they  know 
much,  though  they  are  officially  told 
little.  They  all  recognize  that  the 
old-fashioned  "victory"  of  the  past 
is  almost  as  obsolete  as  a  rifle  in  a 
front-line  trench.  They  all  accept 
the  new  war,  which  means  grinding 
down  and  wearing  out  the  enemy  by 
every  means  and  plan  and  device  that 
can  be  compassed.  It  is  slow  and  ex- 
pensive, but  as  deadly  sure  as  the  logic 
that  leads  them  to  make  it  their  one 
work,  their  sole  thought,  their  single 
preoccupation. 

A  nation's  confidence 

The  same  logic  saves  them  a  vast 
amount  of  energy.  They  knew  Ger- 
many in  '70,  when  the  world  would 
not  believe  in  their  knowledge;  they 


FRANCE    AT    WAR  129 

knew  the  German  mind  before  the 
war;  they  know  what  she  has  done 
(they  have  photographs)  during  this 
war.  They  do  not  fall  into  spasms  of 
horror  and  indignation  over  atroci- 
ties "that  cannot  be  mentioned," 
as  the  English  papers  say.  They 
mention  them  in  full  and  book  them 
to  the  account.  They  do  not  discuss, 
nor  consider,  nor  waste  an  emotion 
over  anything  that  Germany  says  or 
boasts  or  argues  or  implies  or  intrigues 
after.  They  have  the  heart's  ease 
that  comes  from  all  being  at  work  for 
their  country;  the  knowledge  that 
the  burden  of  work  is  equally  dis- 
tributed among  all;  the  certainty  that 
the  women  are  working  side  by  side 
with  the  men;  the  assurance  that 
when    one    man's    task    is    at    the 


130  FRANCE    AT    WAR 

moment    ended,    another    takes    his 
place. 

Out  of  these  things  is  born  their 
power  of  recuperation  in  their  leisure; 
their  reasoned  calm  while  at  work; 
and  their  superb  confidence  in  their 
arms.  Even  if  France  of  to-day 
stood  alone  against  the  world's  enemy, 
it  would  be  almost  inconceivable  to 
imagine  her  defeat  now;  wholly  so 
to  imagine  any  surrender.  The  war 
will  go  on  till  the  enemy  is  finished. 
The  French  do  not  know  when  that 
hour  will  come;  they  seldom  speak  of 
it;  they  do  not  amuse  themselves 
with  dreams  of  triumphs  or  terms. 
Their  business  is  war,  and  they  do 
their  business. 

THE  COUNTRY  LIFE  PRESS,  GARDEN  CITY,  NEW  YORK 


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